Mexican soldiers will get a pay raise after elimination of oversight agencies, president says

MEXICO CITY – Mexico’s president mentioned Monday that a lot of the cash gained by eliminating independent oversight and regulatory agencies will go to the military to fund an increase in troopers’ pay.

The announcement by President Claudia Sheinbaum is the newest in a a collection of latest and weird funding sources to pay for the nation’s more and more influential army.

Final week, Mexico’s Congress permitted charging each cruise ship passenger a $42 immigration payment, with a lot of that cash additionally going to the armed forces.

Below Sheinbaum’s Morena get together, since 2019 the army has been given powers to construct and run all the things from railways, airports and airways in Mexico, and a few of these tasks seem like shedding cash.

For over a century earlier than, Mexico’s armed forces have been very restricted of their actions, restricted from taking any position in politics and did not have many enterprise pursuits. However that each one modified below Sheinbaum’s predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who noticed the military as a loyal, unquestioning ally and a safeguard for his political and coverage legacy.

López Obrador, Sheinbaum’s political mentor, additionally made the armed forces, and the quasi-military Nationwide Guard, the nation’s important regulation enforcement forces.

In late November, Mexico’s Senate voted to get rid of seven independent regulatory and oversight agencies, a transfer that critics warn will cement the ruling get together’s energy and keep away from outdoors scrutiny.

Sheinbaum known as it a money-saving measure, arguing that the federal government can extra effectively deal with capabilities like freedom of data requests, anti-monopoly enforcement and energy-market regulation.

Nonetheless, critics and overseas traders and critics worry this might open the door to favoritism and a scarcity of transparency.

And earlier this month, Mexico’s Senate — managed by the president’s Morena get together — voted to charge cruise ship passengers $42 per head for port calls, drawing sharp criticism from the tourism trade.

Mexican enterprise chambers say the immigration cost — from which cruise passengers was once exempt — could harm the nation’s $500 million per yr cruise trade.

Two-thirds of the cash raised from the cruise ship prices would go to the Mexican military, to not enhance port services.

Furthermore, lots of the military-run tasks seem like huge cash losers, which can assist clarify the federal government’s urge to seek out additional funding for the armed forces.

For instance, one in every of López Obrador’s pet tasks — the “Maya Prepare,” a vacationer line which runs in a loop across the Yucatan Peninsula — has drawn solely 20% of the ridership anticipated when it was proposed.

The Maya Prepare began service on Dec. 16, 2023. Whereas it is not fully completed — two comparatively little-used stretches are scheduled to enter service later this months — the most well-liked and heavily-travelled elements of the road are already in service.

As of Dec. 8, authorities introduced the practice line had carried just a little greater than 600,000 passengers in its first 51 weeks. That’s solely one-fifth of the three million passengers authorities had claimed it might carry per yr.

On Monday, the federal government introduced a “package deal tour” deal through which one other military-run, cash shedding undertaking — the government-owned Mexicana airline — would supply flights to stations alongside the Maya Prepare line.

The flight would take off, after all, from one other military-run undertaking, the brand new Mexico Metropolis Felipe Angeles airport, which is simply beginning to break even as a result of the federal government pressured cargo planes, and a few passenger flights, to make use of it.

Mexico’s ruling Morena get together is already running enormous budget deficits to fund its favourite constructing tasks like railways and oil refineries — a few of that are being built by the army. The federal government is determined to seek out new income sources.