La Nación / They accuse and request oral trial for lawyer Gregorio Gómez for adulterating promissory note

As of the penultimate month of 2020, State obligations represented 32.3% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) revised by the Central Bank of Paraguay (BCP) in December, exceeding the prudence limit by 2.3 percentage points (pp) . In this sense, the implementation of a fiscal convergence plan and a commitment to improve the quality of public spending would be important to reestablish fiscal balance, said analysts at the consulting firm Mentu.

Given the limited fiscal space of the State, the increased public spending required to contain the current crisis led to the total public debt amounting to US $ 11,540.9 million as of November 2020, a figure 30.3% higher than the registered at the end of 2019.

Analyzing by origin, the external debt amounted to US $ 9,903.9 million, increasing 36.8% compared to the end of 2019. This would be explained mainly by the accumulated increase of 34.2% in the balance of loans from multilateral organizations and bilateral, as well as the 37.1% accumulated in international bonds.

For its part, the internal debt totaled US $ 1,637 million, a figure 1% higher than that registered in December 2019, according to data from the Ministry of Finance.

Meanwhile, the economist and former head of the Central Bank of Paraguay, Carlos Fernández Valdovinos, said that Paraguay was able to borrow US $ 1.6 billion, but did not make progress to improve spending.

After a radio interview, he insisted on a point that was talked about practically throughout 2020, regarding whether the country will have to rethink some aspects and what they would be, such as that the cycle should be evaluated in the first place; that is, the next few years, which does not imply not measuring the structural in the medium and long term.

He mentioned that in terms of congressional support for loans, the Legislature will always support everything that is higher than spending because politically that is easy and it suits them. Where there is a lot of weakness to support is what is concerned in improving spending or spending less, he said.

“In that we did not see any type of progress, we talked a lot about the reform of the State, but beyond the announcements of good wishes, there has been no progress in that. The Emergency Law came out within 48 hours in Congress and it will be studied in two weeks, ”he said.