Mandatory expenses for the Federation for interest on the public debt, transfers to states through participations and pensions totaled 1.8 billion pesos (bdd) from January to July of this year, which represents 44% of total public spending.
Updated figures from the Treasury this Tuesday highlight a significant growth compared to the same period in 2012, 10 years ago, when these expenses represented 32.4%.
Of these three mandatory expenses, the one that absorbs the largest proportion of total spending is pension spending with 16.3%; They are followed by participations with 16.2% and financial cost of debt with 11.1%.
Pension spending is the one that has grown the most in the last 10 years, going from 11.1% of total spending in 2012 to 16.3% in 2022. It is followed by the financial cost of debt, going from 7.8% to 11.1% and participations which went from 13.5% to 16.2%.
In millions of pesos (mdp), pension spending totaled 668,862 mdp from January to July; that of participations 667,426 million pesos and cost of debt 454,802 million pesos.
Think tanks in Mexico such as the Center for Economic and Budgetary Research (CIEP) and Mexico Evalúa have warned of the need for a reform, especially to pensions to free up space in public finances and increase the arrival of tax revenues, beyond acts of inspection and greater control of taxpayers.
According to a Treasury bulletin, the behavior of participations to federal entities and municipalities were greater than 52,848 million pesos (mdp) derived from the good performance of participable federal collection, which registered an annual increase of 8.3% in real terms.
For its part, the financial cost was 12,325 million pesos below schedule, as a result of the active liability refinancing strategy.
juicy income
In the January-July period, budget revenues from the public sector reached 3.8 trillion pesos, an amount 218.389 million pesos higher than what was foreseen in the program and which represents an annual growth of 5.3% in real terms.
As of July, oil revenues were above the scheduled figure of 134,034 million pesos, driven upwards by an increase of 38.4 dollars per barrel (dpb) in the average price of the Mexican blend with respect to the program.
Meanwhile, the ISR collection observed during January-July was 143,944 million pesos above the programmed and registered a real annual increase of 15.3%, spinning 8 consecutive months of growth. For its part, VAT collection increased 4.0% in real terms in the annual comparison and exceeded what was forecast for the period by 29,782 million pesos.
