The Government recalls that any debt relief must be coordinated multilaterally with other official creditors.
The external debt that Cuba has contracted with Spain amounts to 1,970.66 million euros, which represents about two thirds of the total figure for all of Latin America, 3,086.68 million euros.
The figures correspond to January 31, 2020 and have been revealed by the Government in a parliamentary response to Vox, collected by Europa Press.
In 2015, within the framework of a multilateral agreement between creditors, Spain forgave Cuba 1,709.9 million euros as interest and the principal of the debt stood at 537.3 million euros, but the debt has grown again since then.
The next creditor, with much lower figures, is Ecuador, with 235.58 million euros. Venezuela (217.97 million), Argentina (205.98 million) and Nicaragua (142.78 million) follow.
The debt of the rest of the countries with Spain is below 100 million, and this figure is only close to the Dominican Republic, with 87.74 million. Uruguay’s stands at 14.05 million, Paraguay’s at 25.85, Panama’s at 25.23 and Mexico’s at 36.83 million euros.
For its part, Honduras has a debt to Spain of 28.76 million euros, El Salvador of 36.56 million, Costa Rica of 22.11 million, Colombia 28.13 million, Bolivia of 8.43 million and, finally, Chile has just 20,000 euros.
The Government has provided these data in response to a question from Vox, which wanted to know if the Government intends to forgive the debt of Ibero-American countries as requested by former President José Luis RodrÃguez Zapatero.
The Government’s response is that the law regulating external debt management, which dates from 2006, establishes that debt relief actions “will be limited to exceptional cases in which over-indebtedness hurts the development of the debtor country.”
In addition, the regulations establish that the debt relief actions must be coordinated in a multilateral way with other official creditors in the Paris Club, a forum that brings together the main sovereign creditors and in which the actions are agreed.
In any case, the Government also reminds that the debt reliefs adopted do not necessarily imply cancellations, since on many occasions they are implemented by means of rescheduling without installments.
