Among the 10 ‘favorite’ programs of the federal government, the Pension for the Welfare of Older Adults is the one that has increased its resources the most so far this six-year term.
From 2018 to 2023, spending on pensions for the elderly will have grown 629%. It is estimated that its spending will reach 335,000 million pesos, which represents an increase of 34%; 85,000 million pesos compared to 2022, and will accumulate 35% of the total spending on government transfers, refers to the analysis of Mexico Evaluates the 2023 Economic Package presented this Wednesday.
For the following year, most of the increase in subsidies, 68%, will be due to the budget for this pension program, flagship of the current administration.
“The increase in the consented program of this government occurred at the expense of other programs, from 2018 to 2023, the total spending of subsidy programs increased only 13%; equivalent to 112,000 million pesos”, explained at a press conference, Jorge Cano, researcher of the Public Expenditure and Accountability Program of México Evalúa.
The opportunity to increase pensions has opened up at the same time as the cutback or disappearance of programs dedicated to education, science, security, health, the environment, equality between women and men, including programs that were born with this government, such as the Benito Juárez Scholarships or Youth Building the Future, will have less budget in 2023 than in other years.
“In Mexico, unfortunately, we build, we design systems that we don’t know how much they are going to cost us, and then obviously they are implemented or they don’t give the results we expected because they lack resources, I think that is the case with these pensions, they were taken to the constitutional level , but its sources of financing were not discussed, it is still pending, it is undoubtedly worrisome”, commented Mariana Campos, coordinator of the Budget and Accountability Program of México Evalúa.
They don’t help those who need it
According to the analysis, the payment of these pensions are not focused on the poorest, but are granted universally, to all adults over 65 years of age.
In fact, the Ministry of Finance calculates that the poorest 20% of the population obtains 7.7% of the resources of this program, while the richest 20% obtains 20.9%.
In other words, the social program with the largest budget, which concentrates more resources each year, is regressive.
“It is an important pressure for the budget, added to this is the spending on pensions of the old regime, so if we add all this together, there is no spending since 2000 that has grown more in relation to GDP than this, to Despite the reforms that have been made, such as the one in 2014, and the collection effort that we have seen on the part of the SAT, nothing grows like pensions,” said Campos.
