The ministry was initially sanctioned to spend 112 billion pesos ($6.6 billion), but the final expenditure reached 144 billion pesos, marking a 29% increase. The Navy, under a separate ministry, also overspent by 37%, with the final expenditure standing at 57.5 billion pesos against an initial budget of 42 billion pesos.
A considerable chunk of the additional spending was directed towards President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's favored projects, including the Maya Train and the state-owned Mexicana airline. The president, popularly known as AMLO, has consistently utilized the military for infrastructure development, which he perceives as his legacy. This has led to a 150% increase in the military's budget since his inauguration in 2018.
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However, the military's spending spree extended beyond these allocations. The budget for the Maya Train, originally under the purview of Fonatur, a government tourism agency, was transferred to the Defense Ministry in September 2023. This resulted in the ministry spending 10.1 billion pesos ($600 million) on the project by year-end, without Congressional approval. The ministry also spent 873 million pesos on the Mexicana airline, despite receiving no allocation from Congress.
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Aura Martinez, the information coordinator at the Global Initiative for Fiscal Transparency, expressed surprise at the drastic increase in spending. She said, "In the best of cases, it shows a lack of planning, and in any case it weakens the country’s budgetary credibility.”
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The Defense Ministry managed to exceed its budget through an amendment, a mechanism that allows a ministry to modify the budget without Congressional approval. Congress is only informed about such amendments in rare situations where the changes surpass 5% of a given governmental branch’s budget, as per Martinez.
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The ministry also increased spending from zero to 11.4 billion pesos on a program within Defense that funds military upgrades and expansions. This included an additional 100 million pesos spent on modifying a ranch to house an equine reproduction center, and 9.4 million pesos for a porcine gestation facility in Queretaro.
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In December, the Defense Ministry spent 6.8 billion pesos on two Lockheed Martin C-130J Super Hercules aircraft, another expenditure not approved by Congress.
Martinez warned, “An absence of budgetary credibility makes the country’s financing more expensive and weakens its economic institutionalism.”
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