Afore returns to the IMSS only 946 million pesos of 41 billion

Mexico City. The director of the National Commission of the Retirement Savings System (Consar), Julio César Cervantes, maintained that until 2020 – when the reform was carried out to regulate the collection of Afore commissions – the profitability of these administrators was double that of the commercial banks, because they charged twice the average in the region. Even with this regulation, its profits went from 39 billion pesos in 2021 to 30 billion in 2023.

When presenting the panorama in which the Afore operate, he highlighted that even when they were reduced by half, the commissions allow them to correct operating expenses and have significant profits. However, there is still reluctance to comply with the law and transfer resources from unclaimed accounts to the IMSS, as provided by law, since of the 259,945 accounts in this situation in the 10 Afore, they have only delivered 946 million pesos, which They contrast with the 41,500 million that the global amount amounts to under these conditions.

After once again questioning the lies of the conservative bloc about the reform that proposes creating a compensatory fund to improve the retirements of those who will retire with the reform regime of Ernesto Zedillo and Felipe Calderón, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador launched a they don’t have a filler to financial institutions. The year before last and last year are the most profitable for banks in the history of Mexico. What do they want? There are no limits?

López Obrador recalled that the compensatory fund will have several sources of financing, including these debts from the Afore and 6 to 8 billion pesos from the liquidation of Financiera Rural. My purpose was to leave this initiative, which I already knew was going to generate some controversy because of this, for later. But why would I really like to see the law passed and see if we can create the fund for May 1, Labor Day? As a demand to the workers of Mexico.

For the president, the fundamental thing is to reverse the neoliberal pension reforms, because if what the previous governments did badly and unfairly is not corrected, those who retire in the future would do very badly. He rejected that the initiative seeks to confiscate, expropriate or steal workers’ money: Those who steal are others; They are not here, they are not us, so that we begin to respect each other.

Millionaire debts

Although the Afore Azteca is not the one that owes the most, the president placed particular emphasis on this administrator owned by Ricardo Salinas Pliego – with whom he has differences over the multimillion-dollar tax debt of Grupo Azteca – because it has only delivered 19.7 million pesos to the IMSS of unclaimed accounts, when the amount is 1,847 million. He has returned only one percent.

Cervantes disaggregated the resource debts of the unclaimed accounts of the administrators, among which Afore XXI Banorte (a public-private association operated by that bank and the IMSS) stood out, with 76,140 accounts in this condition that total 9,360 million pesos, of which they have only returned 284.7 million, and Principal, which has 29,036 unclaimed accounts, with a balance of 6,255 million pesos, and has only returned 115 million.

Regarding commissions, he highlighted that these were reduced 1.01 percent in 2018 to 0.566 in 2023, a decrease of 50 percent. Derived from the 2020 reform, Between 2023 and 2030, workers will receive an additional one billion 500 thousand pesos in their accounts, which will generate an increase in assets and increase their pensions.

The director of the IMSS, Zoé Robledo, was responsible for responding to criticism of the reform, which is why he stressed that it clearly indicates that active accounts will not be touched. He assured that the right of workers to claim their resources is imprescriptible. The 2020 reform established that a person who did not claim, for any reason, their account after 10 years, no longer has to go to the Judiciary to claim it: the Afore had to return that money to the IMSS and this to the worker..

The director of Infonavit, Carlos Martínez, maintained that the intention was to instill fear by saying that the pension fund will be administered by the Banco del Bienestar, when they will be resources assigned to the Bank of Mexico in a trust of the Ministry of Finance, with a technical committee, in addition to it being clear that it cannot be used as a mechanism to finance the public deficit. Like the IMSS and the Issste, housing accounts are also imprescriptible.