27 days before the presidential elections are held, one of the aspects that the team of presidential candidate Xóchitl Gálvez is clear about is that workers’ resources will not be touched to finance the Pension Fund for Wellbeing that came into being. effective last May 1.
In an interview with El Sol de México, Fernando Galindo, coordinator of the public finance table of the candidate for the Force and Heart for Mexico coalition of the PRI, PAN and PRD, indicated that if they win the elections, they will create campaigns to return this money to workers who have inactive accounts in the Afore and Infonavit.
“We are not going to touch the resources of the workers. What this reform (of the Pension Fund for Wellbeing) is doing is taking resources away from workers who do not know that they have an account or have not been able to access it,” said the person who was undersecretary of expenditures during the government of Enrique Peña Nieto. .
In his opinion, this reform endorsed by the Congress of the Union only opens the door for the federal government to take resources from both inactive and active accounts, when it is in a low-income scenario.
“We are in favor of them having higher incomes when they retire, but not at the expense of other workers,” said the ITAM economist.
Galindo commented that one of Xóchitl Gálvez’s proposals on pension issues is to lower the age to access the Universal Pension program from 65 to 60 years, this despite the fact that the global trend is to raise the retirement age, given the increase of life expectancy.
According to Galindo, this change is financially viable. On the one hand, he assured, there is budgetary space in the federal government’s personal services item, and on the other, greater resources can be obtained if fiscal reengineering is carried out in the State’s productive companies such as Pemex and CFE.
Oil rounds will return with Xóchitl Gálvez in the presidency
To face the problem of pensions and have more slack in public spending, Galindo comments that a re-engineering must be done in the relationship between Pemex-CFE and the State, this in order for them to stop being a fiscal burden and to free up resources to address other priority sectors such as health, education and infrastructure.
Galindo, who comes from a government with which the first reform was carried out to remove Pemex’s monopoly on oil extraction, mentions that the oil rounds could return if Gálvez wins the elections.
“It is necessary to change Pemex’s business model. This ideology of wanting to produce gasoline at the cost of losing money makes no sense (…) The oil rounds (would be) in those places where it makes sense to make partnerships with the private sector. “The important thing is to strengthen the wealth of the Mexican State, to achieve wealth to finance the well-being of families.”
Renewal of the T-MEC, a key issue in the presidential succession
Convinced that Morena will lose power on June 2, Galindo stressed that facing the first review of the T-MEC in 2026, the country must be ready in economic, energy and infrastructure matters.
Gálvez’s team has prioritized six aspects to maintain a healthy relationship with Mexico’s main trading partner. Among them is providing legal certainty and security so that investors have no doubts about establishing themselves in Mexico and greater investment in human capital, mainly in science and technology.
Regarding the benefits that the relocation of companies or nearshoring can generate, Galindo considered that the López Obrador government has wasted it and although FDI data have been presumed, more than 80 percent are reinvestments and not new capital.
“If we do not take advantage of the investment with these six options, we will not take advantage of this moment. Without a doubt, we must take care of geopolitics and our main commercial partner to improve employment and the quality of life of Mexicans; “If there is no change in public policy, we are not going to take advantage of it.”
When asked if he will be the next Secretary of the Treasury, he responded:
No, Xóchitl Gálvez will be the next president of the country.
Debt will suffocate the next government
The economic and political panorama that the new government will receive is not very encouraging for Fernando Galindo, since he will inherit public finances pressured by the increase in debt and a weakening of public institutions and the Judiciary.
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“In this six-year term we went from a debt level of 10.5 billion and we are going to end up at 17 billion. The problem is that the investment projects that were financed with debt are not going to have any profitability, they are not going to be productive. In addition, we return to having a primary balance with a deficit, this means that we take out the credit card to pay the interest on the debt, that will make fiscal convergence impossible if we continue doing the same thing.”
Of the 30 points of GDP in the budget, only 5.7 percent can be adjusted. “And if we adjust in three points as the government proposes in the Pre-Criteria, you are talking about disappearing 80 percent of the state secretariats, eliminating 100 percent of the government operation or investment. What they propose is impossible.”
2024-05-06 11:00:00
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