Breathe
By Barbara Anderson
I always like to navigate the nearly 200 pages of the Federal Expenditure Budget (PEF) through the items related to disability, which are basically within the Ministries of Health, Education and Welfare.
I added up all the items and yes, there will be more spending linked to the care of people with disabilities (pcd) -an increase of 3.6% versus 2024-, but in real terms it will be a loss because it will not even cover inflation, which this year will close at 4.76% and is expected to be just 3.6% in 2025. Want to feel worse? This inflation is a national general weighted, but in the case of disability the numbers are higher if we take into account the medical inflation will be 16% this year and the educational inflation will be around 7%.
The education of Mexicans with disabilities will be the area hardest hit by the second floor of the 4T austerity plan, since the cut here will be 21%. This not only affects the few students who are currently in school (only 25% of the population between 5 and 18 years of age), but also closes even more opportunities to the 75% who do not know a classroom in the country.
And within this financial injustice, the item that loses the most is Basic Education, which will have a budget 46% less than that which will be exercised in 2024.
The Ministry of Health's program for the care of people with disabilities increased by 3.8%, but the most significant adjustments will be in the National Institutes, such as the Ramón de la Fuente Psychiatry Institute (with 4.5 million pesos less) and the Luis G. Ibarra Rehabilitation Institute (with 9.5 million pesos less than last year).
Another institution that loses revenue, although it is a ghost now within the Welfare Secretariat is the National Council for the Development and Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities (CONADIS) that will have a budget 1 mdp less than last year and remains acephalous since 2018.
The budget allocated by the CNDH for monitoring the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities increased by a few shillings only, while the amount required by ISSSTE to attend to its disabled beneficiaries is exactly the same year after year.
And here I would like to point out another fact that is not minor: the Mexican population and the population of people with disabilities is not the same from one year to another. You may think that I am stating a truism, but I am not, because the budgets seem to be made for the same number of people.
In the 2020 Census, which was one of the most complete -although perfectible- to measure the population with some living condition, the total number of pcd was 20.8 million.
In this year's update of the ENADID 2023, the number rose to 22.1 million people, meaning that in each of these three years there were 433,300 Mexicans with disabilities added to the 'padrón' of this minority. By mere statistics, it is impossible for the ISSSTE to have the same number of beneficiaries with disabilities from one year to the next.
The Secretariat that continues with positive growth is that of Welfare, due to the weight of pensions for people with permanent disabilities, but here too there was a strong brake: while between 2023 and the election year of 2024 there was an increase of 16.2% in pensions to be dispersed, by 2025 the increase will be only 4.37% (again, not even inflation).
This year the 1,482,451 beneficiaries received 3,100 pesos per two-month period and in 2025, each allowance will increase by 100 pesos. With the increase that the portfolio that Ariadna Montiel continues to manage requested from the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit, it will be enough to add only 9327 new beneficiaries.
I have been reviewing the PEF with 'lenses' for disability for the past 7 years and it pains me to see how they systematically cut the budget year after year, regardless of the six-year term in office. And the brutally wise words of Carlos Rios, activist and member of Human Right Watch come back to me, "people with disabilities in Mexico always come very cheap to governments".
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of the company. Opinion 51.
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