Projects To Be Shielded From Privatization/Trust in FGR

Resources delivered. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced that the federal government has delivered all the funds that correspond to the states and municipalities, according to the reforms approved in 2007 and 2013. Deputy Minister of Expenditures at the Ministry of Finance Victoria Rodríguez added that the federal funding for the states and municipalities represents almost half of the government resources. For the next year, MX$1.02 billion (US$49 million) will be allocated, which equates to real growth of 6.7 percent compared to past budgets. She added that the participation for 2022 will also increase.

Government construction. López Obrador said that the priority projects of his government, such as the Mayan Train and the Felipe Ángeles International Airport, would be shielded against privatization. The projects will come under the auspices of a company managed by the Ministry of National Defense (Sedena). “We have already made a decision to protect these projects because, knock on wood, if (the neoliberals) return, they should return what was stolen. If the corrupt neoliberals return, they will want to privatize what they could not or did not have the time to deliver. They call this divestiture, and it is the euphemism they have used since the time of Carlos Salinas. They invented the divestiture of non-strategic companies, including Telmex, Cananea, Ferrocarriles. Nothing was strategic,” he said.

UN Security Council. López Obrador said that when he goes to the UN Security Council, he will touch on the issues of corruption and inequality in the world. He commented that these would be the issues that will be discussed because corruption is the cause of greater evils, such as poverty, migration, violence and even the destruction of the planet. “There is a monstrous inequality in the world and the United Nations has to act and I’m going to talk about that next Tuesday because that’s where all the problems originate, due to corruption in all its expressions, variants; there is poverty, inequality, migration, violence, destruction of the planet. You have to go to the root, you have to address the causes.”

Trust in FGR. López Obrador said that trust must be maintained in the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) and its head, Alejandro Gertz Manero, after a judge ordered preventive detention for former Director of PEMEX Emilio Lozoya, who is accused of receiving bribes from the Odebrecht company. “You have to trust the Prosecutor’s Office. I have always said that Alejandro Gertz Manero is an upright man of integrity. I trust him and he will not pretend, he will not allow impunity, he will not act according to a slogan. He knows that this is a historical moment that we are living,” López Obrador said.

No crude oil exports by the end of president term. López Obrador announced that, in a letter sent to US President Joe Biden, he promised not to export crude oil and that “all production will go to the domestic market.” He added that specifically, “We promise not to extract more than 2 million barrels, which means that at the end of my term, we will not be exporting crude oil. We will process our material and all production will go to the domestic market.”

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Click HERE for full transcript in Spanish