Fuel prices will come down in three years, president-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador said yesterday.
Speaking at a press conference following a meeting with members of the Confederation of Industrial Chambers (Concamin), Mexico’s next president also said that there would be no steep fuel price increases, or gasolinazos, under the administration he leads.
“Not only will there not be gasolinazos but gas and diesel won’t go up by more than inflation for three years and after three years, when we have production of gasoline in Mexico, we’ll lower prices, imports will come down,” López Obrador said.
“We’re going to rescue the energy sector . . . production is falling and if we don’t intervene with a new plan, it could produce a crisis of greater intensity . . .” he added.
The leftist leader, who won the July 1 presidential election in a landslide, also spoke of the need to reactivate the economy given that growth in Mexico, at around 2%, continues to lag behind the global rate.
“We have to get out of economic stagnation and that’s achieved with a joint effort. We need the participation of the public, private and social sectors,” López Obrador said.
The president-elect, who will be sworn in on December 1, predicted annual growth of 4% during his six-year term which, if achieved, would beat the rates recorded during all of Mexico’s past five federal administrations.
López Obrador reiterated his proposal to reduce the value-added tax (IVA) and income tax in the northern border region, adding that his team was analyzing the possibility of implementing the same scheme in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec region of Oaxaca.
He also said he planned to move federal secretariats and other government dependencies to different regions of the country in order to achieve more equitable growth.
“There are regions like the Bajío, the Riviera Maya, some border cities and some regions in the center of the country that have growth of 5% to 8% but other places instead of growing, they decline,” López Obrador said.
“It’s not fair or advisable that public and private investment be concentrated only in some areas of the country.”
The first departments to be shifted will be the Secretariat of Tourism to Chetumal, Quintana Roo, and the Secretariat of the Environment to Mérida, Yucatán, López Obrador said.
He had already announced that the Secretariat of Economy headquarters would move from Mexico City to Monterrey, Nuevo León.
The president-elect added that he had agreed to meet every three months with the Concamin members as part of a strategy to “govern together and to have development with justice in our country.”
During the campaign period, López Obrador made a concerted effort to persuade the electorate and the private sector that he is not anti-business as his critics have long attempted to portray him.
While he has continued to rail against the nation’s political and business elite, whom he collectively dubs “the mafia of power,” AMLO — as he is commonly known — has also showed his willingness to cooperate with the private sector, as demonstrated by his announcement last week of an apprenticeship program backed by the influential Business Coordinating Council (CCE).
The president-elect and members of his prospective cabinet also sought last week to ease concerns about the next government’s economic plans, a strategy that analysts say contributed to the peso recording its greatest single-week gain in more than six years.
Source: El Financiero (sp)
