There will be less investment in 2025: Claudia Sheinbaum

MEXICO - The President of Mexico said that public investment in 2025 will be lower than in 2026 and 2027, when several key government projects are underway.

The president detailed that her administration is making an “important effort” to close the 2024 budget well and in that context she remarked the decision of her predecessor and political ally Andrés Manuel López Obrador to try to finish several star infrastructure works this year, after his departure.

“The amount of investment will not be as much as it will be in 2026, 2027, when we will have all the projects underway, but there will be works,” said the President regarding her government's spending plans for the coming year, in her morning conference.

This confirms a fear expressed by the country's industrialists. Last Monday, the president of the Confederation of Industrial Chambers (Concamin), Alejandro Malagón, expressed the sector's concern about the government's goal of reducing the public deficit next year; “we are concerned (…) that it means a reduction of public investment in infrastructure”, which is key to trigger private investment.

In the midst of an increase in spending to finish projects of her predecessor, such as a tourist train and a refinery in the southeast of the country, the President said two weeks ago that Mexico's fiscal deficit at the end of 2024 will be less than 6% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the largest in several decades.

In addition, Sheinbaum has stated several times that by 2025 the goal is to reduce it to around 3.5%, while analysts have said that it will be difficult to reduce it by next year, despite the expected fiscal consolidation.

The President highlighted the impact that the support distributed during the year since the impact of Hurricane Otis in the tourist city of Acapulco has had on public spending, and informed that next year new works will begin, such as passenger train lines in the center of the country.