By chance, the state of Mexico passes the test of budgetary transparency: IMCO

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IMCO considers in this study that the citizens must know “how much, how and what” is the public budget spent on to create trust among the people and their government

TRANSPARENCY

By chance, the state of Mexico passes the test of budgetary transparency: IMCO

The State of Mexico got a “low grade” on the Index of State Budgetary Information (IIPE-2017) also known as Budgetary Transparency and presented by the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness (IMCO in Spanish), since it got the 23rd place in a national scale, and an average grade of 73% which is considered as “low” by the institute itself.

For example, besides Manzur, the Head of Health department, Cesar Nomar Gomez has extraordinary net incomes that exceed 8 million pesos per year –higher than Manzur’s-, which origin is not clear enough if the data between his declaration of interests and patrimonial. The same occurs with the Secretary of Tourism, Rosalinda Benitez (daughter of Humberto Benitez), or with some other high functionaries of the state government, which use their spouses or partners as a “facade” to hide authentic fortunes.

This means that in the last year of the former governor Eruviel Ávila’s administration, 2016, there was practically no advance at all but 1% in the IMCO’s indicator, where you could see padlocks to have access to public information such as complete payrolls, contracts’ assignments, countable information of escrows and allocations to NGOs, for example.

IMCO considers in this study that the citizens must know “how much, how and what” is the public budget spent on to create trust among the people and their government. This study evaluates the quality of the information shown in the incomes’ laws and budgets of discharges in each federal entity of the state through 116 criteria, disaggregated in a sum of 10 sections to evaluate its “presentation and accessibility”.

Aspects such as “classifications of countable harmonization” are also graded, the disaggregation of the public debt as well as the availability of the budgeted amounts in each one of the most important concepts of the state’s finances.

The IMCO’s IIPE 2017 report –based on the budgetary exercise of 2016-, reveals that the State of Mexico is among the entities with a higher amount of budgeted amount assigned in 2016 –along with Mexico City-, which not always match with a higher transparency, according to the gotten grades.

In this sense, the State of Mexico got a general grade of 73.3%, considered as “low” along with states such as Sinaloa (72.3%), Nuevo León (70%) and Baja California Sur with 69.8% of accomplishment.

Actually, the State of Mexico has an “orange” cover in the IMCO’s study, which means that the entity is the penultimate in the scale since at the beginning, the states with “very good grades” are colored with dark green, then light green which means “good”, then yellow that means “moderate”, then orange which means “low” (as the State of Mexico), and finally red, which means “very low” in the IIPE’s scale.

On the other hand and while in 2016 only Coahuila, Jalisco and Puebla achieved the total accomplishment of the whole criteria, in 2017, Baja California, Chihuahua and Colima joined to this group according to the report. This means that such states have detailed budgets disaggregated and they follow the forms of countable harmonization. Besides, they publish all of their laws of finance matter and transparency on their websites; in contrast with Michoacán and Mexico City which are the only entities with a grade lower than 60%, which means the worst ones on the list.

The report by entities indicates that Michoacán does not disaggregate in a detailed way a budget higher than 60,000 million pesos and on the other hand the government of the country’s capital delays the publishing of the classifications of countable harmonization, the IMCO’s report highlighted.

WHAT IS IT GRADED?

Budgetary transparency –to know how much, how and in what the public money is going to be spent- since with a good planning, the states can adopt a structured way and clear of showing to the citizen the use of the public resources.

The IMCO’s IIPE evaluates the quality of the budgetary information of the 32 federal entities starting from 100 criteria gathered in 10 sections which are:

1.-The access to the laws of incomes and budgets of expenditures.
2.-The availability of open data and the structure of the incomes’ laws.
3.-The use of classifications released by the National Council of Countable Harmonization (CONAC in Spanish)
4.- The apportionment of resources aimed to government’s offices and institutions.
5.- Information about the budget that federal entities transfer to municipalities.
6.- The apportionment of resources aimed to the payment of jobs and salaries of public officials.
7.- Information about the contract’s conditions of the public debt.
8.- The resources transferred from the federation to the federal entities.
9.- The budget aimed to escrows, subsidies, and programs in the federal entities.
10.- The type of rules used by the governments to make adjustments and reassignments of the public budget.

RESULTS IN THE STATE OF MEXICO

Which were the worst grades that the state government got in matter of budgetary transparency according to the 10 points referred?

The worst grades per point were for the “public debt” area, since only 23% of accomplishment was shown in aspects that have to do with informing where the hired credits are going; while in the use of classifications released by the CONAC, Eruviel Ávila’s government hardly reached 50% of accomplishment.

About the availability of open data in the incomes’ laws, it got a grade of 66.67%; in matter of information about escrows, subsidies and specific points, the rate of accomplishment was barely 47.62%.