The Week in Agribusiness: Producers Rally for More Budget

This week, Mexico’s Chief Audit Office presented a series of reports that show the government’s department programs with the biggest misappropriation of funds in 2018 within the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, Fishing and Nutrition (SAGARPA), now known as the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (SADER). The five programs with the highest resource diversions are the Agriculture Promotion Program, the Support Program for Small Producers, the Marketing Support Program, the Agrifood Productivity and Competitiveness Program and the Livestock Development Program.

In other news, faced with cuts of more than MX$20 billion (US$1.05 billion) to the agricultural and fishing sectors outlined in the 2020 expenditure budget draft, the PRI party in Sinaloa – together with productive organizations – called for a protest which will depart next Monday from different points of the state to Mexico City where they will join a concentration of producers at Congress.

The President of the Shipowners Union of the Pacific Coast, Jesús Omar Lizárraga, said national fishing collapsed due to the low production of shrimp and the high costs related to this activity, which has not allowed the fishing sector to be competitive internationally. 

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• PRI called for a protest to rescue the budget for fishing and agriculture. The party’s president in Sinaloa, Jesús Valdés Palazuelos, said that more than 1,000 people are expected to arrive in Mexico City on Monday, including farmers, fishermen, ranchers and workers from Sinaloa’s primary sector. 

• Shipowners said they expected greater sensitivity from the federal authorities regarding the fishing sector crisis. The President of the Shipowners Union of the Pacific Coast pointed out that industry setbacks will cause a reduction in staff. 
• These are SAGARPA’s five programs with the most alleged resource deviations in 2018. Duplicate subsidies, certified payments to be settled that do not match and beneficiaries that were not the target population are some of the hints that these programs were wrongly using a budget of MX$50.9 billion (US$2.7 billion).