The federal government received 847.9 million pesos during the first half of the year to maintain current water concessions that have not been occupied in the last two years, but whose holders seek to tie up under their control.
Without further details about the concessionaires who paid for an extension of the right to the liquid, without using it, the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit showed that the amount captured by the non-expiration guarantee fee for national water rights was reduced 6.1 percent compared to the comparable period last year.
This mechanism – widely recommended by law firms as a way to retain “water rights valued in millions of pesos” – is a way to prevent the authority, in this case the National Water Commission (Conagua), from declaring the total or partial expiration of concessions on national waters.
The fact that it is not publicized what type of concessionaires are paying for this use opens the door for sectors such as the financial sector to maintain the concession without necessarily exploiting the allocated water.
According to an analysis by Oxfam Mexico, after the reforms to the General Water Law and the National Water Law in December, the concessions acquired by banks in Mexico since the 90s of the last century exceeded 100 at the beginning of 2026.
“Although it is unconstitutional, commercial banks have more than 100 concessions and even use them for speculative purposes to increase their profits. This scenario is aggravated by the growing consumption of water in data centers that support artificial intelligence,” the organization noted.
In your report OligarchyOxfam México pointed out that “water management in Mexico is captured by large companies and fortunes. This has turned it into a commodity, despite being property of the nation, and has displaced the human right to water to the margins of public policy. The concessionaires that extract more than one billion liters a year barely represent 1.1 percent of the total, but consume almost a quarter of all water nationally.”
As a result of the December reforms, a new regulation for the determination and payment of the non-lapse guarantee fee was published on August 4, which replaces the one from May 2011.
According to an analysis by the firm Nader Hayaux Goebel, the new regulation modifies the rules to interrupt the expiration of a water concession, and establishes a quarterly period, in addition to promoting greater intervention by Conagua to declare the end of the rights over the liquid.
With the modifications, the payment of this fee to preserve rights can be made on up to three occasions – which may or may not be consecutive – during the validity of the title, in addition to which a justification must be presented regarding the lack of use and the reasons why it is required to preserve the unused volumes, explained the legal firm.