The ministry reported that the methodology has been changed and debt issues of the IESS, commissions, among others, may be made transparent.
The The Ministry of Economy and Finance will resume the publication of the debt bulletins that have been pending publication since August last year. Thus, the country will be able to have debt data again, after having been lacking this information for five months.
The State portfolio said that through ministerial agreements 96 and 99, of October 15 and 22, 2021, respectively, it had issued the technical standard for the preparation, content and publication of the public debt bulletin and its statistical annex.
According to the Finance statement, the new methodology incorporates the required components for the calculation of the indicator of the debt rule and other obligations of the non-financial public sector and Social Security, with additional information that had to be collected from different internal and external sources. “All these aspects are established in the current legal regulations and were not included in the previous bulletins,” explained that State portfolio. The change in methodology occurs two and a half years after the last change that took place in the Lenín Moreno government.
The ministry also commented that The new formats are aligned with the international dissemination standards promoted by international organizations, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. From what has been explained, the new bulletins will present the indicator of debt and other obligations of the non-financial public sector (including Social Security) with respect to GDP, in accordance with the definition of Ministerial Agreement 77 of August 14, 2021 and its technical implementation standard.
Other information that could be new is the one that has to do with loan commissions, that will also become transparent in the new information.
This information, duly reviewed, has been processed, analyzed and classified both by its level (aggregated and consolidated) and by its sector (total public sector, non-financial public sector and general state budget), said the ministry.
A) Yes, Tomorrow, January 7, the information will be published until August 2021; on January 14, 2022, that of September 2021. On January 21, the information for October; January 28, November, and February 11, December.
Although the bulletins have not been published, it is presumed that Ecuador’s public debt, according to Jaime Carrera, executive secretary of the Fiscal Policy Observatory (OPF), could be around $ 65,170 million. This is because the Central Bank recently published data for October $ 46,974.3 million (44.6% of GDP) and it is roughly calculated that the domestic debt would be at $ 18.2 billion. According to the latest Finance bulletin (July 2021), the external debt was at $ 62,321.90 million. Of which $ 44,148.74 came from external debt and $ 16.064.6 million from internal debt.
For Jaime Carrera, what has happened with the lack of information about the debt is a setback. He explained that the obligation of the ministry is to publish reports in a timely manner. He recalled that the debt methodology had already been changed in the Lenín Moreno government, precisely as part of the agreements with the IMF, and with this a series of items that did not appear in the previous methodology were already transparent.
According to Carrera, these types of changes generate confusion and lack of reliability in the debt figures. He was of the opinion that if certain arrangements should be made or data added, the solution was not to stop publishing the numbers for five months, but to add the new ones. He also considers that the ministry is showing a bureaucratic attitude by delaying the delivery of this information, which is very important for the transparency of the country.
According to Alfredo Arízaga, dean of the Business School of the SEK International University, It is always good that the Government can carry out a more rigorous accounting of the numbers. At the same time he explained that it is It is very important to have the debt data, as this allows a double check to be carried out in order to verify if the growth of the doubt it’s compatible with the deficit that is presented. On the other hand, it allows verify if the legal amounts of debt are being met. Although at the moment the country is still in a transition stage.
Arízaga commented that when the government of President Lasso assumed power, it was known that certain inconsistencies were found in the debt numbers. Among them issues with the debt with China and lack of clarity in the debt with the IESS. He recalled that in this matter there are two factors to take into account. On the one hand, the debt in internal bonds that it has with the Biess and that are very easy to account, and the debt with the IESS, both for contributions from its own servers and for the payment of 40% of the debt. For Arízaga, this chapter should be polished, it could even have been a reason for observation by the IMF.
He explained that in February when all the bulletins are published, then it will be possible to verify exactly what the changed data were and if they merited a five-month information package.
In any case, he commented that although at the moment the latest Finance figures are for July 2021, the Central Bank data are for October in the Central Bank. These figures reveal a stable behavior of the external debt. According to these figures, in January 2021 the external debt was at $ 45,201.1 million (42.9% of GDP); while for October of the same year it reached $ 46,974.3 million (44.6% of GDP). This represents $ 1,773 million more of external debt. He acknowledged that the figures that are the longest are those of domestic debt.
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