The economic package proposed to Congress for next year maintains an estimate of Gross Domestic Product growth between 1.8% and 2.8%, but the most specific perspective is around 2.3%, given current conditions that sounds ambitious, especially in a context of global slowdown and the constant tariff threats from Donald Trump’s government.
This economic package is no longer just a fiscal document, it is the map that will outline whether Mexico can move from resilience to sustained growth, or if it will stagnate in a cycle of growing deficits and external dependencies.
The Secretary of the Treasury establishes its vision in three pillars, robust domestic demand, driven by rising wages and formal employment, public investment, and a strategic position of global value chains.
However, while the Treasury aspires to that 2.3%, multilateral organizations are more cautious in this regard: the International Monetary Fund and the OECD calculate 1.5% and 1.3% respectively, while the World Bank and the Bank of Mexico itself agree on a maximum range of 1.4%.
This difference in calculation is a gap that implies between 250 and 300 billion pesos less in collection, we would be facing a scenario of insufficient growth and increasing fiscal risk, among other things due to the structural deficit of Pemex.
The most obvious risks are those of energy dependence, tariffs and the contrast between social and productive spending, in contrast to the opportunities where it is also necessary for the private sector to get involved, such as relocation, promotion of SMEs and digitalization, and to some extent as a catalyst the celebration of the soccer world cup.
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The package introduces some corrective adjustments that respond to the weaknesses generated by, for example, informality and evasion, through improved collection efficiency, simplification for SMEs and customs modernization with much greater digital controls.
Investment incentives for private capital funds and a preferential ISR rate of 15% for legal capital repatriated without deductions, but with the obligation to invest it productively for at least three years, 100 percent forgiveness of fines and surcharges for taxpayers over 300 million pesos who regularize debts before the end of this year.
These recognized advances are not entirely sufficient, because some structural rigidities persist, such as inflexible social spending, high debt, and lagging public investment.
For the economic package to really be an engine of prosperity, much deeper adjustments are needed, a structural reform of the ISR, expanding the tax base, capping the debt, redirecting subsidies to Pemex and universalizing pensions.
These adjustments would be costly at first, but once implemented they would generate greater resources in productive investment, because it is about going beyond correcting immediate operational and social efficiency, evolving towards structural reforms that break vicious circles.
The budget is based on survival with a hint of continuity, it corrects some subjects but does not fundamentally transform a real fiscal pact that lowers taxes on those who generate employment and raises them on those who evade or pollute.
A constitutional ceiling on debt and deficit that forces all governments to maintain prudent scenarios, a far-reaching capital repatriation effort, we have to stop being a country that exports talent, receives remittances and settles for being the backyard of the United States.
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