The Mexican government’s ruling has been very clear: this year it will not inject more capital into Pemex to pay off its debts.
The Undersecretary of the Treasury, Gabriel Yorio, has said it several times in recent weeks.
And he has substantiated his statement with a piece of information: the reduction of the participation rate (of the government) in Pemex’s profits from 65% previously to the current 40%, gives the company a wide margin to pay its debts.
The official’s warning is striking because it is recorded just at the moment when the oil company’s data for the third quarter of the year shows a drop in its profits, lower income and large debt payment commitments for this year.
Although the official discourse has been emphatic that the government will maintain its support for Pemex, it seems that it will have its nuances. Until last year, the government injected more than 35 billion dollars into it.
Pemex, registers a debt of 107 thousand 387 million dollars that represents 6.3 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country.
And it will have to pay off $18 billion of its debt before the end of the year.
According to IMCO data, (Pemex) must pay 16.9 percent of its debt between April 1 and December 31, 2023.
Even more worrisome, according to the same analysis body, between January 2024 and March 31, 2027, Pemex will have to pay a third of its total debt, equivalent to 34.4 billion dollars.
In the first quarter of 2023, Pemex already had to pay 38.2 billion pesos for interest, commissions and other expenses related to its financial obligations.
That amount represents an average of 12.7 billion pesos per month or 424.2 million pesos per day.
And it is an amount 29.4 percent higher than that observed in the same period of 2022, which is why it represents the second largest amount of resources allocated to this concept for a January-March period in the last 13 years, according to the IMCO.
Another piece of information that gives an idea of the size of the resources that Pemex allocates to pay its debts is what the company paid between January 2011 and March 2023, for a cumulative total of 1.26 trillion pesos in interest alone.
On the other hand, Pemex reported a 53.6% drop in profits in the first quarter of this year, registering only 56,735 million pesos compared to 122,000 million pesos in the same period last year.
The Secretary of the Treasury, Rogelio Ramírez de la O, has said that the government will always be behind Pemex.
And he has clarified that by law the Mexican government cannot guarantee Pemex’s debt because a constitutional reform would be needed, but the government is in a position to continue supporting Pemex.
However, he has also pointed out that by presidential instruction, the Treasury provides feedback to Pemex on issues that need to be developed and reordered.
In other words, Ramírez de la O and his team are supervising Pemex’s handling of finances very closely.
And to that extent, it is that, as they have already warned, they will support it, but they will watch that with the wide fiscal margin that the government is giving it, it complies with the payment of its debts.
In other words, the Treasury squeezes, but does not hang. Let’s see.
