There is no shortage of challenges in Mexico, but governing the country isn’t such a difficult job, President López Obrador said Tuesday.

Speaking in Culiacán, Sinaloa, at the opening of a new branch of the state-owned Bank of Well-Being, López Obrador said that his government applies “a very simple formula” to ensure that it administers Mexico well.

“Look, governing is not as complicated as some people think,” he said.

“We apply a very simple formula to make a good government,” López Obrador said, explaining that his administration’s first aim is to eradicate corruption to ensure that no one siphons off money that belongs to the people of Mexico.

“The [public] budget isn’t the government’s money, it’s the people’s money,” he said.

AMLO, who is just two weeks short of completing his fifth year as president, said that the second aspect of the government’s “simple formula” is “not allowing luxuries in government.”

Previous governments used public money to pay extravagant pensions to former presidents and provide “luxuries” to the “golden bureaucracy,” López Obrador said.

“Now, with this simple formula [for good governance] we’ve freed up a lot of public money for the benefit of the people,” he said.

“The majority of households in Mexico receive part of the public budget [via welfare programs], even if it’s just a little bit. Of 35 million families in our country, 30 million receive direct support,” AMLO said.

López Obrador has made combating corruption, eliminating government excesses and delivering welfare to citizens central aims of his administration. However, his government – like previous ones – has faced accusations of corruption, including in cases involving food security agency Segalmex and the Youths Building the Future apprenticeship scheme.

Some of the challenges López Obrador and his government face, and which will be passed on to the new president next October, are ones related to public security, energy, water supply and the management of migration flows.

With reports from El Universal