Economics: The AMLO government continues to pursue inefficient and costly policies on important fronts
The programs prioritized by the current government have performed poorly according to multiple evaluations, including those of the public agency Coneval and the most recent INDEP tool for evaluating the effectiveness of social-development-related public programs that has been produced for several years by GESOC. The latest edition of the INDEP rates the 2021 performance of 80 programs on the basis of three variables: the quality of program design, the ability of the program to meet its goals and the extent of coverage for potential beneficiaries. Of the 80 program performances, 87% were rated either as poor, dispersed (zero results) or as suffering from an opacity that prevents them from being evaluated. For example, regarding the agricultural sector, its ratings show clearly that sweeping attempts to overhaul agricultural programs have been motivated by clientelist objectives and have abandoned strategies focused on increasing the productivity and competitiveness of smallholders.
In other economic news last week, the jobless rate held steady at 3.3% in October, and that same month the country recorded another major trade deficit, but one that marked a significant improvement over a year prior even as strong export growth continued to be overshadowed by robust demand for all categories of imports. In contrast to those generally favorable numbers, the public sector registered a 60 billion peso deficit for October in a major reversal from the 11 billion surplus of a year earlier.
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