The president assured that the preliminary draft will not have the need to issue a single penny of debt.
El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, pledged tonight that the nation’s general budget of 2025 would not include the need to issue a penny of debt.
I announced that on September 30 we will present to the Legislative Assembly, for the first time in decades, the first fully funded budget. Without the need to issue a single penny of debt for current spending. El Salvador will no longer spend what it produces annually. We’re not even going to lend money to pay the interest on the debt they inherited from us. “We will even pay for it from our own production,” Bukele said during a speech to the nation as part of the 203rd anniversary of independence.
The central government, through the Ministry of Finance, has until September 30 to present to the Legislative Assembly the preliminary draft of the general budget of the nation of 2025, a document that reflects the priorities of the Executive in public investment, as well as estimates of expenditure and income – mainly tax.
In 2023, Hacienda submitted a preliminary draft of $9,068.7 million, with a funding gap of $338.6 million.
Generally, the gap is filled with loans from multilaterals, investors or by issuing new debt in the domestic or external market. This causes the fiscal deficit to increase and public finances are constantly experiencing stress.
Benefits for the economy
“The benefits that this will bring, will not only be immediate, there will be immediate benefits, but every year they will be greater (…) they will be more in a robust economy and in a truly independent country not only because it has peace, freedom and security, but because it will be financially and fiscally independent,” Bukele added.
“The new generations will inherit an economically prosperous country,” he said.
In the inauguration of his second term, on June 1, the president promised that this lustre will dedicate himself to reactivating the Salvadoran economy, which has maintained the lowest growth in Central America.
In his speech, Bukele stated that the second stage of the new one will be difficult.
This article has been translated after first appearing in Diario El Mundo