According to the auditing agency, the shortcomings of the Crusade prevent verifying whether it helps Mexicans in food poverty. i.e., those with the inability to obtain the basic food basket, have more and better access to food.
The recommendations of the ASF includes the need to improve the objective of the National Crusade Against Hunger, because given the way it currently operates, there is no way to measure its performance in reducing hunger.
In January 2013, President Enrique Peña Nieto presented, the National Crusade Against Hunger as his main strategy for social policy management. He described it as a strategy of "social policy that is comprehensive and participatory", leaving behind public assistance measures that only "distribute food to those who lack it."
Three years later, the FSA concluded that
"shortcomings in the implementation, targeting and coordination of actions in the framework of the National Crusade Against Hunger do not permit verifynig how much access to food and other social rights has been guaranteed to the 7.0 million people in extreme food poverty; thus, there is no guarantee that it contributed to the eradication of the prevalence of the number of people in that condition. "In the analysis of the Public Accounts for 2014, the Superior Auditor Office said the Crusade fails in targeting to whom it is addressed, as well as in the coordination of programs within it. On this last point, the Inter-secretariat Commission on the Crusade in 2014 reported that the strategy would include 90 federal programs, but in reviewing it, the ASF determined that there were only 61 operating.
However, even in these 61 it was found that each worked for the benefit of its own target population, implying that their actions did not necessarily affect the population with food poverty, which is allegedly attended to by the National Crusade Against Hunger.
During fiscal 2014, no government agency or state that is supposed to be coordinated with the Crusade reported the funds allocated and expended for those budget programs that are included in the strategy.
The ASF recommends that each of the programs have indicators to assess how they contribute to combat food poverty and to identify how funds that could be used for this purpose in the context of the National Crusade Against Hunger are used.
As for the focus of the strategy, the FSA found that the criteria used by the federal government to determine who are the beneficiaries of the National Crusade Against Hunger are not established in the General Law of Social Development nor are they based on social policy variables, making it impossible to clarify the functioning of the strategy.
"The ASF identified that the problem of hunger is defined by the government, following the methodology used by CONEVAL (National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy), as the lack of access to food, conceptualized in terms of food insecurity associated with experiences of hunger, not with other social needs that relate to access to health, social security [pension], education, basic services, housing quality and the improvement of income, as noted by the federal government."The Mexican federal government defines poverty as those with an income that does not allow them to acquire the basic food basket and who also lack access to three or more social necessities: social security, health services, education, housing and food.
This difference in concepts implies flaws in the design and implementation of the strategy, according to the auditing agency. Of the 61 federal programs that operate within the Crusade only 9 are directly associated with the fight against food poverty and the rest address some other lack, but not abating hunger, which is the main objective.
The FSA concluded that there is no way to identify whether the actions of these programs target the population living in food poverty and therefore, help achieve the objective of the National Crusade Against Hunger.
Other program failures
The auditing agency reviewed the performance of other federal social policy programs, in which it also found flaws:
Program for Food Support did not meet the transparency criteria to evaluate its operation. This program does not establish what mechanisms are to be used to make known the results for beneficiary families or to know how the funds allocated are applied.
Life Insurance for Female Heads of Household. Data does not exist to assess whether this program of the Secretariat of Social Development helps to increse the social security of beneficiaries. It was not possible to verify whether the 5,479 women who were registered in 2014 really were in a vulnerable situation, how much was paid to those who received funds or if the children of women who died remained in the school system because of support from the program.
Popular Health Insurance [health insurance for people without fomal jobs that qualify them for health sevices in government-run clinics and hospitals]. There is no information to assess whether the services provided by Popular Insurance are effective, timely, of quality and did not involve the beneficiaries paying anything, or whether they enjoyed the medical-surgical, pharmaceutical and hospital services without problem and discrimination. Spanish original