A second aspect to consider is whether that low level of indebtedness really translated into our economic recovery to pre-pandemic levels. It was not so. The data shows that growth in 2021 will not be enough to mitigate the decline we had from the pandemic.
Growth in 2021 will be 5.8%, much less than the 8.5% that fell in 2020, according to experts estimate of the Mexican Institute of Finance Executives. To put this in perspective, the 2020 slump was the worst in nearly 80 years, instead the 2021 growth will only be the best in 23 years. There is an abyss of difference.
Thus, the GDP in the last quarter of 2019 was 18.4 billion pesos and at the end of 2021, even with 5.8% annual growth, the GDP will be only 18.2 million pesos. That is, it will still be less than it was before the pandemic began.
It is worth mentioning that the 5.8% growth that we will have in 2021 is higher than what we initially predicted. In 2020 estimated that in 2021 the country grew 4.6%.
In general, at the end of 2021 we can say that López Obrador was wrong. The Mexican economy failed to recover from the pandemic in 2021 and the level of debt did increase. It would very likely have been better to increase public debt more significantly in order to increase public investment in 2021 and thereby give the economy a boost.
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Editor’s note:
The opinions in this article are the sole responsibility of the author.
