Given the little cash in hand with which it began this year and the reduced room for maneuver it has to finance itself with internal and external credits, the National Government continues to look for options that generate the resources it needs for the 2025 spending accounts and Thanks to this, it recently obtained an important endorsement from Congress.
Portafolio learned that last Wednesday -January 22- the Public Credit Commission issued a favorable opinion for the issuance of TES bonds, up to US $3,799 million, which will be used only for the payment of external debt. This in order to guarantee the payment of debts owed to international banks until July of this year.
Debt
According to the sources who spoke with this medium, everything occurs within the framework of a context of uncertainty that Colombia is going through, in which for both the Legislature and the Executive, the priority is to maintain confidence and minimize the nervousness of investors. facing the markets.
They also explained that this decision is aligned with the fiscal programming for the year 2025, seeking to anticipate key financial commitments and is framed within the debt quota approved in the Public Budget Law. Likewise, it is necessary, given that the income and collection situation is not the best.
In this way it is confirmed that the Petro government will continue using the debt as a financing strategy, despite the alerts issued in the market, that this path is making public credit more expensive and could become complicated if the country does not comply with the fiscal rule and the perception of risk worsens.
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Expensive credit
Recently, the investment strategy manager of Alianza Valores, Felipe Campos, reported that currently the Government has to offer a greater reward to attract investors, which reflects a perception of greater risk or less confidence in the country’s economic stability.
“For the first time since 2003, mortgage rates are below the 10-year TES. Let me rewrite this. Today, Colombians get cheaper loans to buy a home than what the Colombian government gets to borrow in the long term,” Campos reported in his X account.
Analysts who spoke with this medium pointed out that the fact that citizens can access cheaper loans than the Government to finance housing is a symptom of distrust in the country’s fiscal and economic management and that this could make access to financing difficult. the future without paying even higher rates.
We must not forget that the State is considered the “safest” debtor of a country, and its rates are usually a reference indicator for other sectors, which is why this anomaly suggests that something It is misaligned in the financial market, which for many is based on low investor confidence.
economic crisis
A valid exit
To find out the implications of this endorsement, Portafolio also spoke with Henry Amorocho, professor of Public Finance at the Universidad del Rosario, who made it clear that the one the Ministry of Finance is taking is a valid solution, but that it is necessary to know in detail the scope of the decision, since it could complicate the fiscal rule for 2025.
“The early approval of this TES bond issue is striking.since it suggests possible liquidity difficulties in the first months of the year to assume external commitments. This issue, carried out in coordination with the Bank of the Republic, seeks to guarantee compliance with the debt obligations approved in the debt quota of the budget law for 2025,” Amorocho said.
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Beyond the pressures due to the state of the debt and the fiscal crisis, this teacher highlighted that a decision of this type sends a positive message to international banks, risk rating agencies and the global financial market, reaffirming Colombia’s commitment of honoring their debts and reducing uncertainty around this issue.
“However, the publication of the details of the liquidation decree of the National Budget for 2025 is still pending, which includes postponements of appropriations for $12 billion and the use of the treasury balance resource, which will allow greater clarity about the country’s liquidity,” he said.
In addition, he closed by saying that the authorization to issue bonds until July 2025 seems to be aligned with the expectation of a flow of resources from key taxes such as the income of legal entities, which is concentrated between May and July, as well as the VAT corresponding to the first two quarters of the year, which configures the path that the treasury will follow during the start of the validity period.
Colombian pesos
tight box
This decision comes a few days after it became known that in December, The National Government sold $1.3 billion in TES, reducing its holdings to only $160,000 million pesos and closing the range of action to solve the lack of liquidity that it had taken advantage of until now.
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The situation of TES was highlighted in a report by BTG Pactual, according to which, the largest values in Treasury Securities, at this time, are in the hands of pension funds ($187.8 billion); followed by the “rest” category, which houses insurance companies, collective portfolios, stock brokers, non-profit entities or cooperatives, among others, with a total of $122.1 billion.
Also appearing on this list are foreign capital funds ($102.9 billion), commercial banks ($92.7 billion), Banco de la República ($32.2 billion), the public trust ($44.3 billion) and the Ministry of estate with less than $200,000 million. In total, the Nation’s TES securities total $582.2 billion.
