Paulina Moreno, the state’s Finance Secretary, explained to Expansión what the fiscal strategy is in a state where the express priority of the governor, Delfina Gómez, is to attend to the more than 8 million people from the State of Mexico who live in poverty.
Increase in tax collection
And although this economist, who graduated from the Center for Economic Research and Teaching (CIDE), recognizes that public finances were in order when she took the reins of her administration, she realized that there were areas of opportunity, both in spending and in tax collection.
Thus, between January and May 2024, the State of Mexico’s tax collection grew by 7.8%, its largest increase since the pandemic rebounded in 2021. The former SAT official also revealed in an interview that one of the keys is in the implementation of tax intelligence.
“We cross-reference information from databases, for example from the SAT, the ISSSTE, the IMSS, and then what we do is identify the areas of opportunity in terms of collection, whether it is targeting random people, then we rather identify who the potential evaders are,” he explains, and then they focus their auditing actions in a better way.
The implementation of this strategy not only improves direct tax collection, but also increases the perception of risk among taxpayers, encouraging them to comply with their tax obligations.
Thus, the collection has grown in various areas:
Ownership: 15.2%
ISERTP: 4.3%
Acquisition of Used Motor Vehicles: 163.1%
Ecological Taxes: 37.6%
Republican Austerity
Emulating federal fiscal policy, the State of Mexico’s Finance Secretariat is also promoting austerity, restructuring of various areas of government, reduction of personal expenses and streamlining of public services.
Paulina Moreno, who was head of the Administration and Finance Unit of Nacional Financiera (Nafin) and the National Bank of Foreign Trade (Bancomext) between 2021 and 2023, stated that this is done without neglecting the strategic areas: security, education and health, above all giving priority to the transition to IMSS-Bienestar.
Debt renegotiation
For the first time in several years, the Edomex government had a budget with zero new debt in 2024. The official explains that, in addition to this, the cost of the treasury’s commitments was reduced through a renegotiation of interest rates.
The rate negotiation was carried out under Article 23 of the Financial Discipline Law since “some loans were contracted during the pandemic when market conditions were very unfavorable (…) Here the only thing we asked was that they offer us conditions in accordance with the current risk of the state,” which is favorable according to various rating agencies, explained the official.
Predial
The head of Mexico’s finances explained that strategies are being implemented to improve property tax collection, including the modernization of cadastres and the updating of cadastral values.
Currently, the entity has agreements with more than 100 municipalities to support them in the collection of this tax. In addition, they will be using satellite data to update the land registers and give impetus to one of the taxes with the greatest potential in the country.
