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.
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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