WASHINGTON, Feb 5 (Reuters) - Puerto Rico, struggling to
restructure its mountain of debt and already paying some but not
all of its creditors, will run out of fiscal emergency measures
by June, the Government Development Bank president said on
Friday.
"By June where the big payments are coming, the big GO
payment ... by June there are no more, literally run out of
tricks, we run out of emergency measures. We really are at the
end," Melba Acosta Febo, president of the GDB, said in a
briefing to U.S. Congressional staff members.
"That is why it is so important that we try to reach an
agreement with our creditors to restructure our debt before we
get to that point," she said.
With a 45 percent poverty rate and exodus of people to the
United States, Puerto Rico is trying to solve an economic crisis
before it hits substantial debt payments in May and July. It has
defaulted on some of its debt and is trying to persuade
creditors to take concessions.
Puerto Rico on Monday asked its creditors to take a huge
"haircut" that would slash its total outstanding debt by about
$23 billion in an opening salvo to resolve the crippling debt
crisis.