Colombia’s Auditor General claimed on Thursday that no one authority can agree on the amount of the country’s national debt.
“We cannot reach an agreement,” Auditor General Jaime Raul Ardila explained concerning how much debt is owed.
Data from the Comptroller General, the Bank of the Republic, and the Auditor General all differ as much as $13.6 billion when it comes to the debt.
According to the Comptroller General, the gross national debt is $134.5 billion, which is the equivalent of 46% of the GDP. Meanwhile, calculations from the Bank of the Republic put the debt at $99.9 billion.
Explaining the reasons for the differences, Vice Minister of Finance German Arce said that “there are methodological differences because we quantify the debt from the National Government, and the Comptroller receives other entities from the state.”
While Comptroller General Sandra Morelli said that the debt is sustainable, Ardila stated that “the state makes calculations of the financial management with lying figures.”
Former congressman Osacar Marin says that apart from the differences among the calculations, there is another factor: “the hidden debt.”
“The future years never have been counted for debt because they don’t come from loans,” Marin added.
Ardila warned of the potential problems from the debt crisis saying, “Greece, which is in a deep crisis, spent more than they had. We keep spending more than we receive. This is a consequence of not knowing how much we owe and how much we have.”
