Perhaps it is too controversial an indicator to keep track of. Why? Well, basically what it tells us is how much of the federal income is collected, for example, in Nuevo León and how much in Chiapas and, correspondingly, how much the Federation “returns” to each one.
As the saying goes: “comparisons are hateful, but differences more.” And in this game there are. Wow there are! And it is very clear how, in this matter, Nuevo León is not Chiapas.
Do you remember that between 2019 and last year there was noise from the so-called Alliance Front? Or was it the Alliance for Federalism? That split from CONAGO, made up of Aguascalientes, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Colima, Durango, Jalisco, Michoacán, Nuevo León, Querétaro and Quintana Roo, of which no more was known.
According to their governors, at that time they collected in their territories most of the Federal Government’s income measured through the Participable Federal Revenue (RFP), but the Federation returned much less than what they put in, because it gave them to the southern states … in which, to say of them, oh, surprise, less is collected.
The grievance as a political weapon, to mobilize the electorate.
However, I did not see them calculate a fiscal balance to prove it. It would have been good, because that would have confirmed his saying more effectively, right?
Here we did it and things are getting good.
With information from the RFP, provided by the SAT and published by INEGI, plus public data on federalized spending (SHCP), we can see that, in 2019 — the most updated year of the RFP — it turns out that they were mostly right. Nuevo León and Jalisco, for example, had very negative fiscal balances.
In the case of the first, it was -257.4 thousand million pesos, and the second of -66.1 thousand million pesos. On the contrary, the fate of Guerrero, Oaxaca and Chiapas was the opposite. Their scales closed in black numbers: respectively, at 40.3 thousand million pesos, 46.1 thousand million pesos, and 53.6 thousand million pesos. In other words, the Federation raised more resources in the first two and sent more money to the other three. Thus, for example, between Nuevo León and Chiapas the gap was more than 311 thousand million pesos! 29.3% of all federalized spending for that year.