Alonso Urrutia and Emir Olivares
Newspaper La Jornada
Thursday June 2, 2022, p. 13
The decision to subsidize the price of gasoline at this juncture aims to control inflation, which is a tax whose greatest impact is felt among the popular sectors, said President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
In defending this policy, he questioned neoliberalism that demonized subsidies, but now it is different and a large part of the 4.5 billion dollars that Mexico has received from the high price of oil is channeled to control the cost of fuel.
During his conference, he rejected the versions that due to lack of liquidity, Petróleos Mexicanos adopted a policy to postpone payment to its suppliers. He said that this company has a large budget and the actions that were adopted were to open lines of credit in the development bank for those who have a contract and want to have credit. We are going to ask the director of Pemex to clarify this for us. But there is no financial problem, on the contrary
.
On the other hand, he boasted that the strength of the Mexican peso has surprised even Wall Street analysts, since it is the first time in recent six-year terms that the national currency appreciates against the dollar. With some graphs, he explained that under his administration the peso recovered 3.5 percent compared to a 42 percent drop with Enrique Peña Nieto, 17 percent with Felipe Calderón and 21 percent with Vicente Fox.
Regarding the gasoline subsidy, he again compared the impact it has had on inflation in general, referring to the fact that the subsidy to the Special Tax on Products and Services (IEPS) allowed the effect of the rise in the price of crude oil to only be of 0.6 percent in inflation compared to 2.5 percent in the United States.
They are different policies, but Mexico has chosen to absorb part of the increase in gasoline with the extraordinary income that has been obtained from the price of the Mexican oil mix, which currently stands at 113 dollars a barrel.
