The five-year debt moratorium was part of an updated fiscal plan that Puerto Rico was required to submit to the board on Wednesday. An earlier draft had been approved, with certain exceptions, before Hurricanes Irma and Maria slammed into the Caribbean island in September. But that plan had to be reworked in light of Maria’s vast devastation, which prompted tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans to flee the island amid job layoffs and power blackouts. Nearly a third of customers remain without electricity, more than four months after the storm.

“We already had a recession in Puerto Rico,” Mr. Rosselló said. He added that the hurricane’s “social impact was significant, because of the exodus and population decrease we’ve had in Puerto Rico, and expect to have in the future.” The government projects its population will shrink by 19.4 percent over the next five years, with a total exodus of over 600,000 people.

In the new fiscal plan, the government relies heavily on federal money both to repair damage and rekindle the economy, which the plan estimates contracted by 11.2 percent, nearly triple what the government estimated last year. It calls for receiving $35.3 billion in public assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. But the island hopes to receive “significantly more” in assistance, having requested $94.4 billion in disaster aid from Congress.

Whether Congress will agree to the disaster aid request remains in question. Hurricane relief was kept separate from a stopgap spending bill last month, and lawmakers, embroiled in a political fight over immigration policy, have yet to decide when they might take up the aid bill.

The new fiscal plan calls for devoting $17 billion of the federal money to rebuilding and upgrading power plants now owned by the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, an island-wide monopoly that by some measures is one of the largest public power companies in North America. The plants produce electricity by burning oil — an out-of-date feedstock that is dirty and exposes Puerto Ricans to oil-price swings. Last year, officials from the authority, known as Prepa, were planning to spend just $2.4 billion to modernize the power plants and switch to cleaner sources of energy.

