Economists surveyed by the Bank of Mexico agree that this is not the time to invest: all of them. In reality, total investment has plummeted, and public investment is at its lowest level in history, comparable only to the first year of the López administration. After almost eight years of no investment, infrastructure has deteriorated, impacting worker productivity. Discussing the open unemployment rate in Mexico is an absurdity we have been criticizing for over 30 years; insisting that foreign investment is large, when total investment has collapsed and foreign investment is almost entirely profit reinvestment, is also pointless. The public investment of the past six-year term, to make matters worse, resulted in three major projects that are now losing money: the Maya Train, Dos Bocas, and the AIFA airport. Seen this way, that investment was not real: it was the destruction of wealth. For 2027, the Ministry of Finance's proposal does not change. They will do so by eliminating what little investment remains. There is no such consensus among business leaders, but there is a broad majority who believe that investment should not be made now. It is true that this was the growth of our economy for 40 years, but before the current group came to power. This suggests that economic activity in the first two months of the year returned to what we had seen almost all of last year: stagnation. Finally, celebrating fiscal consolidation of 1.3 points of GDP, obtained by reducing public investment by that amount, is more a recognition of incapacity. Public finance data for February confirms that all adjustment is being made through public investment. But 2027 is an election year. Considering the loss of credibility they have accumulated, I think the options are, in the end, the same. Since they cannot increase revenues, they will reduce expenses, by a point of GDP. During Holy Week, we had a lot of information on public finances. On Monday, we learned the data for February; on Wednesday, the pre-criteria for economic policy for 2027 were presented, and at some point, the Secretary of Finance, Édgar Amador, responded to The Economist. We had commented here that the previous week's issue of the world's most prestigious magazine contained two texts about Mexico, calling on the government to fix a 'broken economy'. The surprise of the last quarter of 2025, which for some was a sign of a change in trend, was rather an exceptional event. Since then, the average has been 0.8%. We had a contraction in VAT collection and import taxes, which respond to the fall in purchases abroad, especially of consumer and capital goods. In the last year, we have lost 100,000 manufacturing jobs, and if we compare with the beginning of 2018, eight years ago, we are down by 35,000 jobs. In them, he repeats clichés that I don't think will help much. Of the six quarters the current administration has been in office, five have been practically at zero. For this reason, the economic growth projections for this year and next, which appear in the pre-criteria, sound unlikely: 2.3% and 2.4%, respectively, are the center of the expected range. Are they going to commit suicide or are they simply deceiving us? That should be the reference, unless there is a significant change in public policy. The destruction of the Judicial Power, and of any body that could monitor or counterbalance the government, has caused an almost total loss of confidence. Amador, on his Twitter account (now X), published three notes responding to this: one on employment, another on investment, and a third on stability. We'll see.
