Pemex’s debts are growing – Diario de Yucatán

MEXICO CITY (El Universal).— Pemex reported debts invoiced to its suppliers and contractors for 126,357 million pesos in July of this year, a figure that represents more than triple that of two years ago, when the oil company headed by Octavio Romero Oropeza had a negative balance of 37,105 million in July 2022.

These debts are part of the total liabilities of the state-owned company, which amounted to 99,391 million dollars last June, 1.8 billion pesos at the exchange rate of 18 units per dollar.

Romero Oropeza explained that the growth in the company’s liabilities is basically due to the debt contracts carried out by the two administrations between 2006 and 2018, which doubled the amount.

With the support of the federal government, he argued, Pemex has managed to reduce its debt from $130 billion.

Former Finance Secretary José Ángel Gurría acknowledged the situation: “Why does Pemex have 100 billion dollars of debt? Because we took away about 70%, not of its profits, not of what it earned, but of the gross income it received. We even generated an artificial loss for the company,” said the former Secretary General of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in May 2020.

Gurría’s comments were recently echoed by Romero Oropeza, but Pemex’s situation has worsened in some operational areas, according to figures from transparency requests or which the company itself acknowledges in its financial reports.

For Fluvio Ruiz Alarcón, a former independent director of Pemex, the company’s situation is reflected in payments to its suppliers, who are also facing problems, especially the small ones because they depend entirely on the oil company’s activity.

“Pemex’s problems began to accumulate in 1981-1982, with the entry into force of a tax regime that never favored it and that always served the federal government to obtain income for other social and economic sectors in response to political commitments, and it became the most indebted company in the world. The oil company did not improve its finances, not even during the years when the highest returns were obtained,” Ruiz Alarcón pointed out.

At a glance

Insufficient efforts

“During this administration, efforts have not been sufficient to strengthen the company and now the debts with suppliers have become a threat and put at risk Pemex’s operations and the regional economies that depend on the activity,” said Fluvio Ruiz Alarcón.

Current defeat

“I hope that someone with knowledge will take over the management of the company and can insert it into the energy transition, because it is a defeat for our market to continue being geological and not scientific,” he said.

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