Economics: Same Sort of Budget in 2018
There were no real surprises in the final version of the 2018 federal spending bill. In addition to the usual tweaks to budget assumptions regarding projected export oil prices and foreign exchange rates in order to anticipate greater revenues to fund spending next year, the most notable changes involved the reallocation of funds to ministries and programs ostensibly for the purpose of funding reconstruction efforts in the wake of a series of natural disasters in recent months. Compared to the administration’s original proposal, those two sets of changes jointly imply increases of 1.6% overall and 2.2% in the case of programmable spending. In short, nothing new, which means the 2018 budget is shaping up to be one very much in keeping with the trends of previous years, including that of 2016, which was followed by government promises to re-engineer it based on zero-base budgeting, a commitment it never fulfilled.
In contrast, cuts were made to the spending budgets of the National Electoral Institute (-800 million pesos) despite protests from INE leaders at the same time as funding for political parties was left intact, and to the Federal Judicial Oversight Board or CJF (-6.50 billion pesos), without providing any clear explanation for that cut beyond a need to shift more money into other budget lines. Priority was given to security-related ministries at the expense of those related to economic development.
Overall, the budget is “more of the same”; we can expect the same deficient results. We are looking at a budget that is inefficient when it comes to promoting economic growth and lowering both poverty and inequality. It is also marred by great limitations in attending to essential public services such as security, health, education and infrastructure. Undoubtedly, this is a responsibility shared between the Executive Branch, which designs and proposes, and the Legislative, which has the power to modify and pass the budget, which should be one of its fundamental powers and most important tasks. But this remains far outside the reality of governmental power.
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