Sheinbaum cuts the IFT budget by 70% and divides its functions into three

The Digital Transformation and Telecommunications Agency, which will be chaired by José Antonio Merino, will be the Secretariat in charge of developing and conducting telecommunications and broadcasting policies. This means that it will assume administrative and regulatory control of telecommunications, one of the most controversial and complex points of the industry, where América Móvil, despite having asymmetric measures, maintains market concentration, income and infrastructure.

While the decentralized entity, attached to the Ministry of Economy (SE), will have the economic competition power of the IFT, such as investigations of barriers to competition and substantial power. “The objective is to reduce the monopolization of certain products and services,” the president said in a morning conference.

While the issue of community radio stations will remain in the hands of the Secretariat of Infrastructure, Communications and Transportation (SICT).

Sheinbaum Pardo emphasized that eliminating regulators like the IFT comes from the idea of ​​preventing the State from continuing to be minimized in market decisions. “In reality, that is what these autonomous organizations functioned for, to limit the State,” he assured.

The new way of regulating telecommunications, based on three entities, will take effect until the secondary laws are issued and 180 days pass to organize the new scaffolding. However, there is still no date for the publication of the laws, implying that the IFT will continue to serve as a connectivity regulator indefinitely.

But next year’s IFT operation will face complex circumstances. The government approved a 70% cut to the Institute’s budget, whose move puts the constitutional powers of the regulator and even its operation in trouble.

“The reduction is such that considering an accumulated inflation of 62% from January 2014 to November 2024, the 500 million pesos budget approved for the year 2025 is equivalent to less than 10% of the annual budget that the IFT had. in 2014,” lamented the IFT in a press release.