“To the perverse, everything serves as a pretext.” Voltaire Sometimes it seems that the government is the main enemy of itself and the country. Many of their decisions seem to be made not to promote, but to restrict investment and economic activity.
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On July 19, the Tax Administration System, the SAT, released a statement announcing “the suspension of various taxpayers who did not meet the requirements demanded” in the registers of importers and exporters “in accordance with the provisions of rule 1.3.3 of the General Rules of Foreign Trade”. An attached list included 82 companies in the energy, mining and transportation sectors, such as Repsol Downstream Mexico, Compañía de Gas de Ensenada, Grupo Energética Garza, Ferrosur, Ferrocarriles Mexicanos and Kansas City Southern de México. The consequences of these suspensions on the national economy are so far unpredictable. “The collaboration between the SAT, the Ministry of Energy and the Energy Regulatory Commission will lead to greater legal certainty about the fulfillment of the obligations of natural and legal persons related to imports and exports in the energy sector,” the statement said. “These actions are in addition to the various efforts that have been promoted by the SAT to reduce tax evasion and avoidance, one of the pillars of the institutional abc” (bolded in the original). There is no indication, however, that these measures are part of an “institutional abc” to reduce evasion or circumvention. As far as we know, the SAT has not filed any evasion complaint against companies that it is suspending from foreign fuel trade activities. Óscar del Cueto, president of Kansas City Southern of Mexico, tells me that the suspension to his company is because of the rail diesel that it must import for its locomotives. It is a fuel that is not available in the Mexican market. The suspension does not apply, he adds, to its imports of fuels it transports for third parties. This is important because 18 percent of the fuels that are imported into our country are transported by rail. Even so, the available information indicates that the suspension of 82 companies, all private, with activities in the foreign trade of fuels for allegedly not complying with the “demanded requirements” is a new measure to limit the participation of private companies in the field of energy. There is no indication in the information that the SAT disclosed of what requirements these companies have allegedly violated. Their only sin, it seems, is to be private in a field where the government wants to guarantee a monopoly to the state-owned Pemex. We do not yet know how significant the consequences of these suspensions will be. There is no information on whether the SAT will allow companies to reactivate their activities once the alleged faults are remedied or whether these are a mere pretext for a political decision. The changes to foreign trade rules that began to be unveiled in 2020 and many other measures are designed to restore Pemex’s monopoly. But it is not clear whether this company has the capacity to import the fuels that will stop coming because of the suspensions. If it is not, we will see a repeat of the fuel shortage of early 2019, a product of the clumsy measures that were taken to combat huachicol. EXAGGERATEDOn the shortage of cancer drugs, Health Secretary Jorge Alcocer said that “the interest is valid, but exaggerated and used for other purposes by some part of the information.” They sometimes accuse the opposition of a lack of solidarity, but this is one of the most unsupportory statements I can remember.
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