Buying Iberdrola’s electricity generating plants is going to imply greater indebtedness and trying to minimize the news that this regime continues with the increase in public debt requires a series of tricks from the Ministry of Finance.
There is no way to consider the purchase of the 13 power generation plants of the Spanish company Iberdrola as a good sign. It is good for private companies because it obtains liquidity, helps its plans to change its energy matrix, and incidentally removes political pressure from the López Obrador regime.
For the country there is no greater profit in the generation of electricity because those plants had a job dedicated to supplying the Federal Electricity Commission, only now the operating risks are already transferred to the so-called State productive company.
The worst part of this business is in the signal that it sends of the privilege of a very personal dogma of the President of having state control of the energy monopolies at the cost of marginalizing private companies that have the constitutional guarantee to do business.
Thus, an expense of 5.943 million dollars does not really contribute anything to the country and only contributes to the presidential speech and perhaps to make up the financial statements of the CFE a bit.
It is not seen that this operation generates much enthusiasm in the Ministry of Finance, but it is their obligation to bring it to fruition and, incidentally, sell it as a great success of the so-called Fourth Transformation.
The resource most used by the regime will always be the one from which in the past they borrowed more, despite the fact that in this six-year term, unlike any other, the level of indebtedness with respect to the Gross Domestic Product has already exceeded 50 percent.
It is a fact that to make the President happy, and incidentally Iberdrola, the federal government is going to have to resort to an increase in debt.
If we consider the cost to be paid in pesos for this operation, we are talking about 110,000 million pesos, so as not to confuse dollar pears with peso apples.
Of these, the capital contribution is 45,000 million pesos. The Secretary of Finance, Rogelio Ramírez de la O, said that they would come from the National Infrastructure Fund (Fonadin), the agency’s own document details that 51% of this capital comes from Fonadin and the remaining 49% from institutional investors. This operation is managed by Mexico Infrastructure Partners.
The rest of the financing, which is 60% of those more than 110,000 million pesos, some 66,500 million pesos will be borrowed money.
There are development banking institutions in the front line, converted into petty cash, but there are also many private banking institutions that gladly lend for the project with high interest rates like the current ones and with the attractiveness of government guarantees.
In short, not even the ambitious projections of the recovery rate of this investment justify this outlay that does not netly provide more electricity to the country, but does fulfill a presidential whim.
