A week after the governor of Puerto Rico laid out a plan for attacking the island’s heavy debt, analysts are beginning to publicly question the proposals and even the financial assumptions on which they are based, the New York Times reported today. The doubts suggest that Gov. Alejandro García Padilla’s strategy to persuade bondholders and other investors to voluntarily help the island restructure the debt — and take losses on their investments as a result — is a long shot. One credit analyst, Ryan Brady of Morgan Stanley, said that it appeared that the planners had greatly overstated Puerto Rico’s financial needs over the next five years. As a result, he said in a private presentation to clients, Puerto Rico was hoping to get $14 billion in concessions from its creditors, when in fact it might need as little as $5.7 billion. And Sergio M. Marxuach, public policy director for the Center for a New Economy, a research institute in San Juan, P.R., said yesterday that the five-year plan appeared to be “tilted toward austerity rather than growth,” which could undermine its key goal of reviving the island’s economy.
