Fighting corruption in public procedures, far from the six-year goal

Mexico City., A few weeks before the end of the six-year term, various indicators that show progress in the fight against corruption have not changed as the government had estimated at the beginning of the administration and show that what has been achieved is still far from the goals in this area that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador had set for this year.

In the report Progress and results January 2023 – July 2024 of the National Program to Combat Corruption and Impunity, and to Improve Public Management 2019-2024, recently published by the Secretariats of Public Service (SFP) and Finance (SHCP), it is noted that the number of victims of acts of corruption in the carrying out of public procedures fell by just 5 percent between 2017 and 2023, when the goal is a 52 percent reduction; the perception that the population has of the incidence of corruption in the federal administration has been reduced by 28 percent, but the goal is a 50 percent drop; another objective is to halve the occurrence of acts of corruption resulting from the interaction of public servants, but it has decreased by only 0.57 percent.

In the section dedicated to priority objective 1: Combating head-on the causes and effects of corruption, the report points out that the government’s goal for 2024 is to reduce the number of victims of acts of corruption in public procedures by more than 52 percent and to drop from 14,645 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2017 to 7,026.

SFP data indicate that this indicator had an uptick in the first year of López Obrador’s government, when it reached 15,732 victims, but has since declined, falling to 14,701 in 2021.

Meanwhile, by 2023, the last year with available data, the figure reached 13,966, which represents a decrease of only five percentage points compared to 2017.

In the section dedicated to the perception of the frequency of corruption in the federal government, the report states that the government’s goal is for this indicator to go from 86.5 points recorded in 2017 to 43.3 in 2024, that is, a 50 percent drop in the proportion of people over 18 years of age who believe that acts of corruption in the federal administration are frequent or very frequent, according to INEGI measurements.

The indicator has been declining during López Obrador’s government, falling to 66.2 points in 2019, 65.5 in 2021 and 61.6 in 2023, but still far from the six-year goal.

Regarding the parameter that measures the occurrence of acts of corruption, whether they are committed or not, as a result of the interaction between public servants and the population over 18 years of age, the report indicates that the goal is to reach 12,770 annual cases per 100,000 inhabitants in 2024 and thus achieve a 50 percent decrease compared to what was observed in 2017, when 25,541 cases were recorded.

This indicator has hardly changed, as 25,394 cases were reported in 2023, a decrease of just 0.57 percent.