Corruption in Mexico is not just a legal and moral problem. The annual cost amounts to 5 percent of gross domestic product, according to one report, which also found that almost half of business owners said officials have sought money in exchange for contracts or business opportunities. Only 1.5 percent of corruption cases lodged in Mexico end in conviction.
The sooner Mexico’s leaders clean up government, the sooner they can ease people’s concerns—and those of their friends and neighbors abroad. It’s been almost a year since Mexican citizens secured the passage of constitutional reforms to limit corruption, an achievement rightly hailed by President Enrique Pena Nieto as a “paradigm shift.” But unfortunately the president’s own Institutional Revolutionary Party is now holding up laws that are needed to make those reforms stick.
Pena Nieto’s administration has made admirable health and energy reforms. Yet rampant corruption still casts a pall over commerce and undermines public support for future economic liberalization. The president needs to push his party to pass the bills, even if it means calling the legislature back for a special session.