This Administration has acquired unprecedented debt, going from 33.8 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2012 to 46.4 percent of GDP at the end of 2017, generating a brutal amount of interest, which has been covered in a timely manner but accessing new credits. In 2016, the Mexican debt reached a historical maximum of 48.2 percent of GDP, considering that in past sexenniums there was no similar record despite economic recessions.
Specialists in economic matters agree that the reason for this increase is simple: the government spends more than it collects, besides allocating more resources to the payment of interest than to capital.
Regarding the destination of the money contracted during the entire six-year term, specialists in public finances also agree that it was shared among some governors, through federal resources sent to entities.
However, many of these cases have been multiplied and we all know that thousands of millions of funds have disappeared, such as Javier Duarte in Veracruz, César Duarte in Chihuahua, Roberto Borge in Quintana Roo and Roberto Sandoval in Nayarit, to mention Some; other amounts were diluted in welfare programs, duplicated and misappropriated, another part will have remained in unfinished works, in rigged bids, in ghost companies, in election campaigns or flat in some foreign bank accounts.
The contracting of debt, which as a financing mechanism to strengthen investment in priority sectors such as infrastructure, education or health is essential, unfortunately, has not been used for that, during 2017 the Federal Government allocated 533 thousand 351 million pesos at the financial cost of the debt, that is, the payment of interest, commissions, and amortization of the debt, the highest amount since 1990.
Seventy percent of these resources were used to pay government interest, 23 percent was used to pay interest on state productive enterprises and 7 percent was used to finance the federal government.
On the other hand, according to information provided by NGOs such as Fundar, IMCO, and Mexico Evaluate among others, in 2012 investment spending was 4.3 percent of GDP, education 3.6 percent and health 2.8 percent. , but for 2017 these three items were reduced to 2.6, 3.2 and 2.5 percent, respectively.
This implies that the contracting of the debt has also been irresponsible, with completely different purposes than being an engine to move the economy; In Mexico, if we look at it coldly, large amounts of debt have been contracted so that there is nowhere to steal!
Only in this way do the accounts of all the money that they have plundered throughout this sexennium, so we did not understand where all the deviations came from if we were living in crisis.
But as if all this were not enough, according to a publication of the Reuters news agency, the Government of Mexico registered this week before the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) a debt issue for up to 10 billion dollars; This is just over four months before President Enrique Peña Nieto concludes his fateful Administration.
According to the financial information service of Thomson Reuters, Peña Nieto’s Administration, which concludes on November 30, said that the proceeds from the issue will be used for general purposes of the Government, including refinancing, repurchase or withdrawal of local debt or external, that is, for current expenditure, no eventuality or extraordinary need, which generates an important skepticism after seeing how operations and resources have behaved and compromised in various secretariats and in particular in the Office of the Presidency of the Republic.
The period of transition has been advanced, times seem to go flying and the clock does not stop ticking; the hiring of personnel has been suspended in all federal agencies as well as direct awards; Under all this environment we have no more to ask ourselves, why is not debt hiring suspended?
TMP
