Baltazar Hinojosa Ochoa

Mexican American politician

Baltazar Manuel Hinojosa Ochoa (born September 13, 1963) is a Mexican American politician from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and former Secretary of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, Fisheries and Food. He holds a bachelor's degree in economics from the Universidad de Monterrey.

Hinojosa joined the PRI in 1981 and was a member of its National Political Council and the Standing Political Commission. He also was a member of the PRI's Political State Council in Tamaulipas and Municipal Political Advisor in Matamoros. After receiving his degree, in his first public position, he was advisor at the General Office of Documentation, Analysis, and Evaluation of the Secretaría de Programación y Presupuesto. There, he served as advisor and spokesman for the Undersecretary of Development Planning's Political Economy Information Program, where he also served as head of department at the Planning Coordination Office.

As of January 27, 2016, Hinojosa Ochoa took leave from the Chamber of Deputies, as the PRI candidate for the Tamaulipas governorship. Hinojosa Ochoa picked up 36 percent of the vote.

As part of the PRI proportional representation list for the LXIII Legislature, he returned to the Chamber of Deputies for the third time. Between September 2015 and January 2016, he was the president of the Budget and Public Accounts Commission, and also served on the Finances and Public Credit Commission.

On April 23, 2015, he was named Organization Secretary for the PRI National Executive Committee.

On December 10, 2012, the then SAGARPA secretary, Enrique Martínez y Martínez, and upon instructions by President Enrique Peña Nieto, Baltazar Hinojosa was appointed Director in Chief of the Service Agency for the Trading and Development of the Fisheries and Agricultural Markets (ASERCA, by its Spanish acronym), a decentralized SAGARPA subsidiary. He left ASERCA on February 28, 2015.

In late 2004, Hinojosa was elected as the mayor of Matamoros, Tamaulipas from 2005 to 2007. Among his many accomplishments, the public municipal debt was fully paid in 2007. That same year, along with the mayor of Brownsville, Texas, he was named as a Distinguished Border Leader, an award received in Washington, D. C., from Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

He was elected as federal deputy for the Fourth Federal Electoral District of Tamaulipas, in the LIX (2003 2004) and LXI (2009 2011) Legislatures, and received a special award, from then Secretary of Public Education, Dr. Reyes Tamez Guerra, during the VIII National Meeting of Education Authorities, held in San Luis Potosi, in April 2003. In the LIX Legislature, Hinojosa sat on the Budgeting and Public Account Commission, as well as the Finance and Public Credit Commission and the Special Commission for the Burgos Region Basin. He actively participated in the integration of the Federation Expenditure Budget decrees, which included important measures to enhance transparency and efficiency in public spending, more government spending austerity, and federalism. During his term, more resources were allocated to the fisheries and agriculture sector, as well as to road and highway infrastructure. In April 2004, he formulated and presented in Congress the bill for a new Federal Budget Law, which served as the basis for the enactment of the current Budget and Finance Responsibility Federal Law. In the LXI Legislature, he sat on the same commissions as in the LIX Legislature, and on the Committee for the Public Finances Study Center.