In a confusing attempt to answer Cristina Kirchner, who accused him of not having a surplus due to the amount of postponed payments that the State accumulates, Milei acknowledged that if he pays the energy companies and bonuses, he enters a deficit.
“You don’t have a surplus, brother, look at everything you owe,” the former president told him this Saturday at an event in Quilmes. In a radio interview, Milei tried to answer him this Sunday and perhaps without realizing it he slipped in a disturbing statement: he announced that Cammesa will only be paid in the middle of the year and acknowledged that added to the payment of the half bonus: “When those numbers come, operationally we are going to remain in deficit”.
However, he relativized it: “With everything accumulated before, the accounts remain balanced, what matters is that the accumulated balance remains,” he said in statements to Radio Rivadavia.
Milei tried to explain that in the first five months of the year, he seeks to generate “a lot of financial surplus to compensate for the increase in items due to the payment of Cammesa and the payment of bonuses.”
Caputo forced the energy companies to accept a bonus for the debt with a fierce haircut: “If I pay them we will go into deficit”
However, Milei’s announcement contradicts the promises of his Minister of Economy, Luis “Toto” Caputo, who this Thursday met with the owners of energy companies and sought to force them to accept a bonus with a fierce haircut of 50%. , due to the debt that – between December and February – accumulates more than 600,000 million pesos. To soften the unpleasantness, Caputo said that from now on the payments would be normalized, but they did not believe him. Milei has just confirmed to the businessmen that their fears were founded.
Payments to Cammesa will be made mid-year, in June. In the first five months of the year we are generating a lot of financial surplus to compensate for the payment to Cammesa and the bonuses, when operationally we are going to remain in deficit.
Since January, Cammesa stopped receiving funds from the Treasury and was left without cash to pay electricity to the generators and gas to the producers for the thermal plants. The debt began to accumulate and the electricity sector was on the brink of collapse.
For this reason, Caputo sought to accelerate with a compulsive restructuring of the debt that now, with Milei’s statements, enters a nebulous situation.
In any case, Milei’s explanation is very confusing. “If you don’t have the funds to pay the current energy costs for a month because you’re in deficit, how are you going to pay for six months together?” a businessman in the sector asked this Sunday, who also didn’t understand why this idea of make the payment coincide with the disbursement of bonuses, when it would be more logical to do it in stages.
A former Economy official explained to LPO that all the management that Milei and Caputo do with the postponement of unavoidable State payments is to show numbers of “target achievement” to the IMF.
“They are building quarterly goals with accrual and cash, if they pay what they have to pay, they fail to comply with the IMF,” said the source and explained that since these are quarterly goals, that is why they kick off payments to Cammesa by the end of June.
In the same contradictory tone, Milei maintained that the surplus that he announced last week on the national network “has a lot of chainsaws and some part of the blenders,” but it is not all liquefaction of salaries and retirements, and added that when the blender becomes permanent, “they will translate into adjustment.”
