Mexico president sticks to modest economic recovery plan

Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador promised Monday to stick with his modest economic recovery plan after the country’s main business groups reacted negatively to the proposal, which would expand his signature social programmes and tighten government austerity measures in the face of economic havoc wrought by COVID-19.

Mexico will increase some public investment, but López Obrador said in a speech Sunday evening he would avoid public debt.

“Some said that the president just gave a general outline and that this week the Treasury secretary is going to detail and break down the measures, but no, there isn’t anything else, it’s just this,” López Obrador said Monday.

Mexico’s Business Coordinating Council, the CCE, said it welcomed some of the president’s ideas, but ultimately termed his plan “an incomplete response before the great dimensions of the crisis we face”.

Manuel Molano, director of the policy think tank Center for Research in Public Policy, also saw a disconnect between the scope of López Obrador’s proposals and the dimensions of the economic hit Mexico will take.

“We have a problem where the president is not understanding the magnitude of the crisis,” Molano said. “He’s not understanding the historic moment he’s living and how he would have to react to these events.”

López Obrador on Sunday had outlined measures that focus on Mexico’s poorest citizens and has spoken repeatedly in recent weeks of the needs to protect the informal half of Mexico’s economy and those living day to day.

However, Molano said the president appears to be failing to comprehend the massive loss of jobs that is coming for the formal economy and how the loss of those jobs will affect the poorest Mexicans.

“Not understanding the tie between the person selling food on the corner and the person who works in a factory and buys that food, really implies there isn’t a real comprehension of how the economy works,” Molano said. López Obrador said he would create two million jobs in what remains of the year, even though the economy is already in technical recession.

Molano predicted one million or more people would become underemployed or work fewer than 20 hours a week, and 500,000 to 600,000 people would lose their jobs in the formal economy.

Mexico is still waiting on the pandemic’s full impact. The government has pushed social-distancing measures in the past two weeks and has reported more than 2,439 confirmed infections and 125 deaths. Non-essential businesses have been told to keep their employees at home.

On Monday, the big Mexican multinational cement company Cemex said it would comply with government instructions and suspend production through April 30. Officials in the northern Mexico state of Coahuila said everyone should wear face masks in public areas.

On Sunday, López Obrador said top level of government bureaucrats – from undersecretaries on up to him – will have their salaries reduced and give up their annual year- end bonuses.

Molano said López Obrador’s aversion to taking on more public debt is understandable considering Mexico’s chequered past of bailing out failing businesses and the related corruption. But he said that helping small and medium-sized businesses – responsible for most of Mexico’s jobs – would have a greater impact than simply giving small cash transfers to poor families.

But that’s anathema to López Obrador. “They’re accustomed to those at the top being rescued, to not being charged taxes,” the president said Monday. “Some say, ‘Where is the plan to reactivate the economy?’ – because what they want is a starting flag to once again install corruption,” he said.

AP