Four months after announcing a grueling five-year plan for reducing the island’s vast debt and reviving economic growth, Puerto Rico’s top economic officials said yesterday that they had been too optimistic and revised the plan for the worse, the New York Times reported today. When the government first released its five-year plan last September, it warned creditors that it would need $14 billion of debt relief over that period, because it did not have enough money to pay them the total amount due, $28 billion. Officials said yesterday that they now expected to need a $16 billion break from creditors. The officials said they had run updated forecasts for 10 years as well, and things did not get much better. Over the full 10 years, they said, they would need $24 billion worth of reductions in the total $63 billion in principal and interest that various branches of government owed creditors. Read more.
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For more news and analysis of Puerto Rico's debt crisis, be sure to visit ABI's "Puerto Rico in Distress" webpage.
