Greater collection, still far from improving and benefiting health and education

The progress in tax collection levels that has been achieved in the last six years has not yet generated a comprehensive improvement in social development indicators, concluded the working document Fair and efficient public spending: A tool for equality published by the Alliance for Tax Justice, which is an initiative made up of seven organizations.

Among them are Oxfam México, the Center for Economic and Budgetary Research (CIEP) and México Evalúa.

Tax revenues from the public sector have had constant growth in recent years, since they represented 12.7 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in 2018 and increased to 14.3 percent of GDP in 2023, Jorge Eduardo Cano, coordinator, highlighted in a conference. of the public spending program of Mexico Evalúa and author of the analysis, together with Ramiro Suárez, researcher of the public spending and accountability program of the same organization.

“Despite this, we have not seen a comprehensive improvement in all social development indicators, the main one being the lack of access to health services, which went from 20 million people in 2018 to 50.3 million people in 2022. ”Cano commented.

In turn, he added, education indicators deteriorated, since in 2024, there will be 1.2 million students than there were in 2018. The population with educational lag went from 23.5 million in 2018 to 25.1 million in 2022.

The document states that Mexico’s fiscal situation faces challenges that compromise its sustainability and the ability to guarantee the financing of the population’s rights.

“Current income is not sufficient to meet the demands and needs of the country, which has led to an increase in public debt: the financial requirements of the public sector will reach a historic figure in 2024,” the authors commented.

They recalled that international comparisons reveal the low levels of tax collection in Mexico, which limits the State’s ability to allocate resources to policies aimed at reducing inequalities.

They highlighted that it will be difficult to achieve this without expanding government income through taxes, without generating mechanisms that ensure better use of resources and the quality of spending; it will be difficult to achieve the purposes we seek.

They commented that it is essential to establish controls to reduce the discretion of the Executive in the programming, planning and execution of resources.

“If we do not improve controls and transparency, even if collection is increased, the risks of allocating resources to projects that are not socially profitable and of them being allocated to current spending or transfers to public entities that do not improve the situation of the citizens will persist. less favored,” they stated.

They highlighted that although the population in poverty was reduced — which went from 41.9 percent of the total (51.9 million) in 2018 to 36.3 percent (46.8 million) in 2022 — there are also setbacks.

The proportion of homes that receive water daily decreased from 69.5 percent in 2018 to 65.8 percent in 2022 in a period during which there was an increase in public revenue.