MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Greece in the Caribbean: Puerto Rico admits it's broke and can't pay debts

“The debt is not payable,” governor García Padilla said. “There is no other option. I would love to have an easier option. This is not politics, this is math.”

Puerto Rico’s governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla has admitted that the island cannot pay its roughly $72 billion dollars in debts, an admission that will probably have wide-reaching financial repercussions beginning Monday. Last week the governor and his top staff anticipated they would seek significant concessions from the island’s creditors.

 “The debt is not payable,” Mr. García Padilla said. “There is no other option. I would love to have an easier option. This is not politics, this is math.”

It is a startling admission from the governor of an island of 3.6 million people, which has piled on more municipal bond debt per capita than any American state.

A broad restructuring by Puerto Rico sets the stage for an unprecedented test of the United States municipal bond market, which cities and states rely on to pay for their most basic needs, like road construction and public hospitals. That market has already been shaken by municipal bankruptcies in Detroit, Stockton, California and elsewhere, which undercut assumptions that local governments in the United States would always pay back their debt.

Puerto Rico’s bonds have a face value roughly eight times that of Detroit’s bonds. Its call for debt relief on such a vast scale could raise borrowing costs for other local governments as investors become more wary of lending.

Perhaps more important, much of Puerto Rico’s debt is widely held by individual investors on the United States mainland, in mutual funds or other investment accounts, and they may not be aware of it.

Puerto Rico, as a commonwealth, does not have the option of bankruptcy. A default on its debts would most likely leave the island, its creditors and its residents in a legal and financial limbo that, like the debt crisis in Greece, could take years to sort out.

Still, García Padilla said that his government could not continue to borrow money to address budget deficits while asking its residents, already struggling with high rates of poverty and crime, to shoulder most of the burden through tax increases and pension cuts.

He said creditors must now “share the sacrifices” that he has imposed on the island’s residents.

“If they don’t come to the table, it will be bad for them,” said Mr. García Padilla, who plans to speak about the fiscal crisis in a televised address to Puerto Rico residents on Monday evening. “What will happen is that our economy will get into a worse situation and we’ll have less money to pay them. They will be shooting themselves in the foot.”

With some creditors, the restructuring process is already underway. Late last week, Puerto Rico officials and creditors of the island’s electric power authority were close to a deal that would avoid a default on a $416 million payment due on Wednesday.

With other payment deadlines looming, Mr. García Padilla and his staff said they would begin looking for possible concessions on all forms of government debt.

The central government must set aside about $93 million each month to pay its general obligation bonds — a crucial action in Puerto Rico because its constitution requires such bonds to be paid before any other expense. No American state has restructured its general obligation debt in living memory.