Mexican Officials Join Call for Debt Moratorium on Ibero-America’s Multilateral Debt

re posted from                                 E.I.R DAILY ALERT SERVICE

Mexican Officials Join Call for Debt Moratorium on Ibero-America’s Multilateral Debt

April 10 (EIRNS)—Congressman Mario Delgado, who heads both President López Obrador’s MORENA coalition in the Mexican Chamber of Deputies and the Chamber’s Political Coordination Committee, has joined the growing list of prominent leaders from Mexico and the region signing a call for the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and Inter-American Development Bank to cancel their Ibero-American sovereign debt.

The call was issued by the Argentine-based Latin American Strategic Center for Geopolitics (CELAG) on March 20, and has been endorsed by former Presidents Rafael Correa (Ecuador), Dilma Rousseff (Brazil), and Evo Morales (Bolivia), and former Argentine and Brazilian Foreign Ministers Jorge Taiana and Celso Amorim, among others.

Mexico’s Assistant Secretary of Foreign Relations for Latin America and the Caribbean, Maximiliano Reyes, not only has signed the call, but was among the eight prominent figures who participated in CELAG’s “Dialogue on Debt Cancellation for Latin America,” broadcast on April 8, along with Correa, Rousseff, Bolivia’s Alvaro García Linera, now-Senator Taiana, and a Colombian senator and Chilean congresswoman.

President López Obrador, however, clearly feeling the heat from Wall Street and the international financiers, reiterated on April 3 that his government will not touch Mexico’s foreign exchange reserves to confront the pandemic. “What we have in savings will go to pay debt,” he said, because “debt service payment is untouchable.”

That is his government’s policy, but it is clear that circles close to him are at the same time preparing options. Reyes answers to Secretary of Foreign Relations Marcelo Ebrard, who coordinates closely with the President. Delgado served as Mexico City’s Secretary of Finance. and then of Education when Ebrard was Mayor of the city (2006–2012).

Delgado acknowledged in an April 2 interview with Forbes Mexico that writing off the debt would be an extraordinary measure, but he insisted it is necessary because of the unprecedented worldwide economic crisis. Our countries cannot issue the same kind of stimulus as the U.S., France, and Germany, he said.

“It is going to be essential for Latin America that the international institutions help eliminate the foreign debt; cancelling that debt as an extraordinary measure will open fiscal room for governments to be able to respond to the emergency. We cannot treat this crisis as if it was just one more crisis.”

Source: https://larouchepub.com/

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