Salazar added that, if the initiative is approved, it could cause blackouts due to insufficient electricity generation to supply the entire country, an aspect that, he assures, has been avoided with the participation of private initiative investments, which has also allowed the public sector to prioritize its investments.
“To cover the demand, an investment of 87,000 million pesos is required. The CFE’s annual budget in recent years has been 45,000 million pesos. But those have to be invested in new transmission and distribution lines. In recent years, the CFE has tried to invest in electricity generation, but not in transmission and distribution, which is where it has a total monopoly, ”said Salazar.
The federal government initiative considers that the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) has 54% of the electricity generation market in the country, in addition to regulating contracts with private parties, which means eliminating autonomous regulators.
Carlos Salazar declared that this presidential initiative does not define the rules for the delivery of electricity, prices or autonomous regulators and warned that it would be the private sector who could seek protection, not the chambers or other business organizations.
The president of the CCE added that the electricity reform encourages the production of energy with fossil fuel in CFE plants, which cancels Mexico’s energy transition. “There was a whole program of how we were going to reduce our carbon emissions and this cancels that energy transition,” he said.
Third infrastructure package ready
Salazar also declared that the third package for investment in infrastructure is ready and ruled out that the electricity reform is a brake on it. In fact, he assured, they are waiting to present it and report on the status of the projects of the first two packages.
The business leader said that there are some projects that are being held for regulatory issues of public institutions or for permits, without delving further into specific cases.
“The third investment package is ready, it was discussed with the Ministry of Finance, with the new officials who are in charge. The Secretary of the Treasury made all the comments and I do not believe that this will be stopped or that it will stop, they are investment initiatives that benefit Mexico, “he said.