ABRE: gains and gaps in the fiscal health of the municipalities

On August 25, 2026, NotiCel covers the twelfth edition of ABRE Puerto Rico's municipal fiscal-health index. The data are from 2024. The gain the outlet highlights is the weight of debt: 4 percent of municipalities put more than 15 percent of the general fund toward debt, versus 6 percent in 2023. The gap is in day-to-day operations: 43 percent spent more than they took in, versus 39 percent the year before.

ABRE classifies ten municipalities as Unsustainable. NotiCel names, among them, Caguas, Juncos, and Toa Baja. Aibonito holds first place again. Four municipalities did not publish 2023 statements. The note does not complete the list of ten, nor the list of four, with names it did not print. What was published stays; the rest is in the source.

Fewer municipalities above the debt threshold and more municipalities in operating deficit do not cancel each other out. They are two series from the same index, read in opposite directions. NotiCel's headline holds them together: gains and gaps. There is no invented ranking here, and no new sustainability threshold. The word Unsustainable is ABRE's language, quoted by the outlet.

Municipal fiscal health belongs here because it is government and cash, not because this magazine audits city halls. On August 20, NotiCel published another municipal angle, in the report La Década perdida, with civil-society figures on transfers and insolvent mayoralties. That is another note, another document, and another date. The 2024 ABRE index is not used to check that report, nor the other way around.

Anyone looking for the statements four municipalities did not publish, or the detail on each Unsustainable municipality, has to go to ABRE and to NotiCel's piece. Aibonito in first place, 4 percent versus 6, and 43 versus 39, are what the August 25 coverage left on the page.

Source: NotiCel. https://noticel.com/noticias/20260825/abre-puerto-rico-revela-avances-y-retos-en-la-salud-fiscal-de-los-municipios/