A plan without old recipes: AMLO's economic bet to face the effects of coronavirus

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Businessmen disappoint AMLO's economic plan 4:09

(CNN Spanish) - What most worries Blanca Sánchez, a juice vendor in the north of the Mexican capital, is not being able to go out looking for life. It has been in quarantine for a week after the authorities decreed a health emergency that has millions in their homes as a preventive measure to prevent an accelerated spread of the disease.

"I do not know how I can survive from this, I can no longer go out to sell, I am going to lose my clients who always came in the morning or afternoon to have a juice," she says in distress.

But from the National Palace the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador tried this Sunday to calm the spirits of those who, like Blanca Sánchez, fear being left without their income and without employment for the duration of the contingency.

"We are going to rescue the people, let this also be understood", is what the president has said about his proposal that will seek to benefit 22 million people, including those in the informal economy, through programs of wellness. Programs that will be financed with the savings from the budget income stabilization fund, with resources kept in trusts and also with the money obtained from auctions of goods seized from organized crime in the country.

According to an analysis by the Latin American Strategic Center for Geopolitics (Celag), the informal economy in Mexico represents 25% of the Gross Domestic Product. A sector of the population that “lives daily” without a fixed salary and that has remained practically unprotected after the health emergency, since most of those who make it up stayed at home, either for fear of contagion or complying with the sanitary measures imposed. by the government to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

But the president of Mexico pointed out that his programs also include supports for older adults, unemployed youth, in addition to credits. A million in total, for small informal businesses, for farmers and fishermen… “This is the formula of increasing public investment for job creation, of granting loans to small family businesses that seek life as they can, day by day . We are not going to leave them abandoned, said López Obrador, who promised not to apply old recipes that included bank bailouts or the big company, the “from above, as the president calls them.

Those who were left out of the supports make up a part of the business sector, whose leaders have rated López Obrador's emerging program as insufficient, so they have asked him for tax benefits, deferred taxes and a reduction in the tax burden to have a minimum of liquidity. that allows them to pay wages and benefits to workers, concessions that will allow them to keep a source of work at a time when a large part of the production plant is stopped by the emergency.

Some believe that not supporting small, medium, and large companies could backfire. "Without a strong and sustained middle class, which is what makes countries grow, which makes them move forward, not enough resources can be detonated to continue supporting these social programs for the poorest," Tatiana told Aristegui Noticias Clouthier, deputy for the National Regeneration Movement party, founded by current President López Obrador. Clouthier assured that the legislators are analyzing the demands of the sector to mitigate the impact of the crisis due to the coronavirus.

It will be necessary to see now if the blanket is enough for everyone and if the President's economic prescription will be the best to mitigate the impact of the crisis by covid-19. "There will be no other plan, because I was seeing on social networks that some were saying" And where is the plan? We don't hear anything, ”said the president Monday at his morning conference, referring to the fact that businessmen continue to think that possible support will come for Mexican businessmen.

AMLO