Sheinbaum Unveils Economic Plans for Mexico

On March 1, 2024, Claudia Sheinbaum began her presidential campaign in Mexico City’s Zocalo, representing the Morena party and the “Let’s Keep Making History” Coalition.

She presented a comprehensive list of 100 promises as part of her “Project for the Nation.”

This move echoes President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s (AMLO) own campaign launch five years prior, where he set forth a similar list upon his inauguration.

Sheinbaum pledged to preserve López Obrador’s legacy and aims to become Mexico’s first female president.

Among Sheinbaum’s 100 promises, 31 economic proposals stand out.

Half of these proposals indicate a continuation of López Obrador’s initiatives, while the others introduce new ideas:

Sheinbaum Unveils Economic Plans for Mexico

1. Raise the minimum wage in collaboration with business and labor sectors to cover at least 2.5 basic daily food baskets, translating to a nominal annual increase of at least 10%.
2. Ensure social security for all app-based delivery workers currently classified as “partners,” to enforce legal compliance.
3. Promote energy transition through renewable sources and energy efficiency, including solar panels and water heaters on homes and businesses.
4. Double the freight transported by rail.
5. Modernize at least 3,000 kilometers of rural roads and expand handcrafted road programs in Oaxaca, Guerrero, Chihuahua, and Hidalgo.
6. Support major cities with electric public transport systems, prioritizing trolleybuses, elevated trolleybuses, bus rapid transit, and cable cars.
7. Launch a new satellite to enhance national security and technological sovereignty.
8. Create a National Strategy for Relocation and Industrialization for wellbeing.
9. Strengthen 12 Wellbeing Hubs in the South-Southeast linked to the Interoceanic Train and promote 10 new hubs in other regions.
10. Implement the Campeche Plan, focusing on dairy basins, rice production, and infrastructure development.
11. Promote the Balsas River and South Pacific as a comprehensive regional development program.
12. Through Development Banking, initiate programs for supply chain, export, and marketing inclusion for small family businesses and SMEs.

Continuations of AMLO’s Economic Projects:

1. Maintain the autonomy of the Bank of Mexico and a balanced debt-to-GDP ratio, with continued efforts against tax evasion and no tax forgiveness for large taxpayers.
2. Enhance the Welfare Bank as a social banking system to facilitate savings and access to financing among Mexicans domestically and abroad.
3. Drive a housing initiative, propose legal reforms for affordable homes close to work, and aim to create 500,000 houses and a million jobs.
4. Support the presidential initiative to restore fair pensions by reversing the 1997 and 2007 regressive pension reforms.
5. Achieve self-sufficiency in non-GMO white corn.
6. Strengthen Pemex and the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) as strategic public enterprises for domestic consumers and national interest.
7. Kickstart the national petrochemical industry and fertilizer production.
8.  Ensure CFE strengthens energy transmission and distribution capacity while maintaining its 54% generation share after acquiring Iberdrola’s plants.
9. Keep the free trade zone along the 3,180 kilometers of the US border.
10. Enhance coordination with the United States to expand and streamline border crossings for cargo and passengers.
11. Continue strategic projects initiated by AMLO, such as the Maya Train, the Interoceanic Corridor, Felipe Angeles Airport, the Dos Bocas Refinery, and the modernization of six refineries and hydroelectric plants.
12. Use the 18,000 kilometers of railroads for passenger trains.
13. Improve and expand the national toll and federal road network.
14. Transform Mexico into a maritime and logistics power by strengthening ports, customs, and rail connections.
15. Reinvigorate Mexicana de Aviación with more aircraft and new routes.
16. Expand airports in Ensenada, Tepic, Tamuín, Torreón, Lázaro Cárdenas, and Puerto Escondido, and enhance connectivity and improvements for the Mexico City International Airport (AICM).
17. Continue the Internet for All program.
18. Implement the Sonora Plan to boost renewable energies and electromobility comprehensively.
19. Halt open-pit mining concessions and assess undeveloped concessions’ environmental and social feasibility. Prohibit hydrocarbon exploitation through fracking.