The decision makes sense if one considers the changes in the Army’s bank and the deference and trust that the President has with the Armed Forces.
The Banco de Bienestar will become a business controlled by the Mexican Army. Responsible for dispersing around 10 thousand million pesos monthly in support of social programs, it had become an organism with which diverse personalities from the administration of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador -and past six years- sought to do business, for which the President has decided to cede it to the National Defense Secretariat because of the need to armor his administration.
AMLO had already designated the Armed Forces as the ones responsible for developing the infrastructure of the former Bansefi, which contemplates an investment of another 10 thousand million pesos for the construction of a network of 2 thousand 700 branches in the country, which should be operating by the end of 2021.
Subsequently, the Army will also be in charge of equipping those branches with the necessary technologies for their proper operation. After the contract to acquire 8 thousand ATMs of Korean origin with the firm Vivcolmex, linked to businessmen Carlos Cabal Peniche and Alejandro del Valle de la Vega, was canceled.
In the next few days, the institution directed by Diana Alvarez Maury will pass entirely into the hands of the military, who will manage the whole operation and seek synergies with the National Bank of the Army, Air Force, and Navy, better known as Banjercito.
The relief in the Banco del Bienestar would be Brigadier General Ricardo Flores Gonzalez, current director of Banjercito. He will substitute Alvarez Maury, while the ex-sub-secretary of the Interior will run for a seat in the Mexican Congress representing MORENA.
The decision makes sense if one considers the Army bank’s changes during the present administration. Above all, the deference and trust that President López Obrador has permanently with the Armed Forces, even when these affect his image.
In the middle of last year, Banjercito announced changes in its institutional image to align itself with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s policies. The institution changed its traditional slogan from “A bank for all” to “We grow with a single mission: your welfare.”
Just last June, the government tripled the bank’s capital stock to strengthen its shareholder profile, which went from nearly 7 billion pesos to more than 22 billion, with a direct contribution from the Ministry of Finance, headed by Arturo Herrera, of more than 15 billion.
The close relationship between the Executive and the Army is materialized in the tasks they have entrusted to the Armed Forces, currently in charge of building the strategic projects, managing the ports and customs, buying and distributing medicines for the health sector, and even distributing free textbooks.
An example of this privileged treatment towards the National Defense Secretariat: Sedena and Navy Secretariat: Semar is also the lobby that the Mexican government carried out with the United States authorities to attract the case of General Salvador Cienfuegos because, although the President doubted at the beginning of his innocence, he quickly modified his speech and attended the call of the military, bringing the general back home, an innocent man.
Source: El Universal
