According to Cuauhtémoc Rivera, the informal economy tends to rise, even from the first five months of the entry of the new federal government.
A person in the informal market can earn more than 15 thousand pesos a month, with the sale of bottles of water, confectionery or snacks in the vicinity of the National Palace, little more than a professional graduated from the area of Biological Sciences in Mexico.
And this race has the highest salaries in the country, with an average of 13,812 pesos per month, according to the study “Trends in Professional Employment,” of the Ministry of Labor and Social Security (STPS).
She is followed by the area of Architecture, Urbanism, and Design, with 13,549 pesos, and at the opposite pole, there are Humanities careers, with 10,365 pesos and Arts, with 9,768 pesos, according to the Labor Observatory, with data for the fourth quarter of 2018.
The president of the National Alliance of Small Merchants (ANPEC), Cuauhtémoc Rivera, said that the informal economy has an upward trend, even during the first five months of the entry of the new federal government.
In an interview with Notimex, he explained that public trade has gone from being an activity of survival to a criterion of governability, because what would these people do if they removed these jobs when there are no job opportunities and those that exist are “true underemployment? “
This situation worries because it puts in check the occupational health of people and, above all, public safety, because it is illegal to sell contraband products, food and drinks, pirates or without sanitary registration, and behind are the organized crime gangs .
In detail
Despite the recent increase of 16.21% in the national minimum wage and 100% in the northern border, it indicated that working conditions in Mexico have led 52% of its inhabitants to work in the informal market.
This is because it is a commercial activity that brings large economic profits to criminal gangs, since informal vendors do not pay taxes and do not comply with any regulation.
Rivera insisted that this black market obtains “huge profits”, because an informal vendor earns an average of 500 pesos a day, when it is located in the best consumption points, and a formal worker earns only 100 pesos.
You can even spend hours at the helm of a private transportation driver such as Uber to pay the car rent and be able to have an income of 8,000 pesos each month; there are also small merchants who get between eight thousand and nine thousand pesos after spending hours behind the counter of a store.
The numbers
The National Survey of Occupation and Employment (ENOE) of the last quarter of 2018, conducted by the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), revealed that informality is a persistent issue due to dismissals of personnel and underemployment (very poorly paid occupations) .
The informal economy represented 30% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) during the first quarter of the new government, which shows a setback in labor that threatens to rise.
Mexico is also the country where most work is done every year, with 2,225 hours, and the worst pay, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
According to Cuauhtémoc Rivera, leader of the small merchants, the informal market has grown for 30 years and went from offering movies and pirate music to the sale of clothing, footwear, bags, perfumes and even bottled water, confectionery and a variety of stolen snacks, adulterated and without sanitary regulation.
Sustained poverty
“This merchandise makes the engine to grow informality in an excessive way and poverty sustains it,” remarked the businessman, who explained that many of these products enter through different borders and others are from cargo theft in the whole country.
It is estimated that there is a record of at least 5,583 investigative folders for the complaints of transporters since 2018 and so far in 2019. “The authorities know perfectly where the gaps are where any amount of contraband merchandise comes in,” he said.
Data from the National Chamber of the Transformation Industry (Canacintra) indicate that Mexico ranks fourth in piracy and contraband crimes, but it is number one on a continental level. These crimes generate an economic loss of 43 thousand pesos per year for the country.
Fiscal policy
For the interviewee, the government needs to review the fiscal policy, because there is a “huge government strabismus” from the previous administration and even in the current one, believing that the informal market has an exit with only increasing taxes.
He recalled that in the government of Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018) it was decided to follow this path and apply greater rigor for those in formality and leave with hands free those who are not and do not “have respect for intellectual property “
“If you seek to combat corruption, informality is a subject to combat because it splashes across society,” said Rivera, who said that it can not accommodate a tax rule that would further squeeze the pockets of Mexican families, entrepreneurs and merchants who work formally and pay taxes.
“While the black market pirates are served with the big spoon, with total impunity.”
Source: forbes
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