Billionaire businessman Carlos Slim believes the Mexican government is misprioritizing welfare spending.
On Wednesday, he asserted that it was “completely irrational” for the government to spend so much money on pensions for the elderly — more than 1.3 trillion pesos last year – When millions of people live in extreme poverty.
Speaking in Monterrey, Nuevo León, at the 19th World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates, Mexico’s richest man spoke of the need to not only “fight” poverty but also “eliminate” it.
“There must be a minimum level of welfare for the entire population. It is incredible that in Mexico we have not achieved it. We give too much income to pensioners and we have six million people in extreme poverty. That is totally irrational,” said Slim, owner of companies such as Telcel, Telmex, Sanborns and Carso Infrastructure and Construction.
All Mexican citizens over the age of 65 are eligible government universal senior pension program regardless of their wealth or how much they receive from other pension schemes.
That means even 84-year-old Slim, who has net worth around US$89 billioncan receive a universal pension payment of 6,000 pesos (US$311) every two months. While he doesn’t need the money, many older Mexicans — especially those who work in the vast informal sector and don’t receive other retirement income from the government or private employers — certainly do.
Although the universal pension amount is quite modest, the payments could help reduce poverty levels in Mexico. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and other federal officials have regularly highlighted that The number of poor people has decreased during the current administrationpartly due to welfare and social programs, as well as other factors such as minimum wage increase.
On Wednesday, Slim argued that Mexico has the potential to significantly improve its standard of living in the coming years. With adequate investment in the country, Mexico’s per capita GDP — just under $14,000 a year in 2023 — could double within 12 years, he said.
“We have to take advantage of the opportunity with the United States now, because they are in a bad relationship with China,” Slim said, referring to the US-China trade war.
He predicted in 2022 that the Mexican economy will grow rapidly in the coming years as the United States reduces its dependence on Chinese-made products.
“The products they import from [China] “must be produced here,” said the king.
“… What I see… is a prosperous Mexico with continued growth, with many opportunities for job creation and economic activity,” he said.
With reports from The UniversalIndonesian: The Economist And Forbes Mexico