Public works in states advances at uneven pace

Although in the last year the states of the south-southeast region of the country registered favorable balances in public works, compared to the production prior to the arrival of Andrés Manuel López Obrador to the presidential chair, at the national level the result is adverse.

The entity that leads the region and the country is Tabasco, a territory detonated by the Dos Bocas refinery and, to a lesser extent, by the Mayan Train.

According to data from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi), the average monthly production value of public works in Mexico amounted to 11,013 million pesos in the last year (between March 2022 and February 2023).

While the monthly average of 2018 was 13,702 million pesos, that is, a national fall of 19.6% in real terms of the public construction industry is observed.

However, most of the southern states benefited from the federal strategy of locating mammoth projects in the region and thus reducing the gap that exists with the rest of the country.

The big winner was Tabasco, leader in both amount and percentage growth. The average production value of public works in the oil state reached 2,805 million pesos per month in the last year, 666.8% more compared to the 2018 average.

Said result derived mainly from the injection of public resources to Dos Bocas (originally the planned investment was around 160,000 million pesos, although an extra cost of up to 50% more than what was stipulated is estimated), as well as the multiplier effect of the work in the development of additional infrastructure and service works.

Only nine states registered increases

Of the 32 federal entities in the country, only nine showed increases in the analysis period, that is, they were the only ones with greater resources in the last year, compared to the level prior to the López Obrador administration.

Behind Tabasco, in the growth rate of the production value of the public sector, were Yucatán (286.5%), Oaxaca (182.0%), Hidalgo (86.4%), Nayarit (51.4%), Chiapas (46.0%), Campeche ( 35.3%), Quintana Roo (28.9%) and Jalisco (15.0 percent).

Of this group of states, those belonging to the south-southeast are benefiting from the allocation of public resources to the flagship works of the federal government: the Mayan Train and the Interoceanic Corridor.

The first has an impact, in terms of public works and due to its route that it will carry out, in the states of Chiapas, Tabasco, Campeche, Yucatán and Quintana Roo, while the second project, in Oaxaca and Veracruz.

Meanwhile, the entities with the greatest drops in production of public works were Aguascalientes (85.9%), Baja California (84.7%), Tamaulipas (80.9%), Michoacán (78.6%), Tlaxcala (76.4%) and Chihuahua (75.2%). %).

In general, of the 23 states of the Mexican Republic that registered decreases in said period, 19 exhibited drops that exceeded 50%, showing that the regional gap from the south-southeast is closing through cuts in public investment in the rest of the national territory.

rodrigo.rosales@eleconomista.mx