The timely notice of the Secretary of the Treasury

The secretary of the Treasury, Rogelio Ramírez de la O, gives an interview if he sits in a controlled environment or to the Bloomberg agency. Little news information comes out of the comfortable interviews, but from this most recent conversation with the financial agency a very revealing piece of information emerged.

The country’s public finances remain under pressure due to the increase in financing costs for the emblematic works of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

It is obvious to describe what happens with the pharaonic works of the president, the Felipe Ángeles airport, expensive and abandoned; the Dos Bocas refinery, which has doubled its cost and will not refine its first liter of gasoline for at least two years; and the Mayan Train, expensive, ecocidal and without prospects of economic success.

Three infrastructure works that from the beginning pointed to be a failure in the face of the need to develop other more profitable projects for the country, which also do not have good expectations of being profitable and that do put pressure on public finances, as accepted by the head of the Treasury .

What Secretary Ramírez de la O says could cost him his job in the face of an irate president who does not accept that no one goes against him, but who is also presented as a timely warning and in coincidence with the presentation of the economic package for 2023 next week.

Secretary Ramírez de la O anticipates that there is room for fiscal maneuver to maintain the financing of these white elephants without implying an increase in the level of public debt in proportion to the Gross Domestic Product. But it is also clear that its enormous cost will imply that many public resources that are cut from other areas of public spending will be devoured.

There is the warning in time from the Treasury of the snowball that threatens financial stability towards the end of the six-year term.

The three emblematic works of the 4T remain unfinished and will require many more resources to try to finish them before the end of López Obrador’s constitutional term.

Because not even the commercial airport that was installed in the Santa Lucía military base is finished. There is a lack of road and rail works that add costs almost as high, or perhaps higher, than the construction of that aircraft plant itself.

It is not clear how much more the Tabasco refinery will cost and when it can start operating. In addition, transfers of public resources to Pemex and the CFE must be considered a high financial cost for the country.

And in the case of the Mayan Train, it will be very difficult for the complete work, as López Obrador dreamed of it, to be completed within his constitutional term of office and it will be practically impossible for it to be profitable, except in some sections. And all without considering the associated costs that the ecological damage of this work implies.

If the combination of these enormous spending pressures, plus a possible global recession, with the high financing costs due to the increase in interest rates and even a possible commercial conflict with North America, complicate the country’s financial panorama towards 2024. Thus, Ramírez de la O will be able to say “I told you so”.

ecampos@eleconomista.mx