MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Thursday backed a political ally’s proposal to merge three regulatory bodies into a new one in a move the opposition criticized as a power grab that could jeopardize oversight.

The senate leader of Lopez Obrador’s ruling National Regeneration Movement (MORENA), Ricardo Monreal, on Wednesday presented the plan to combine energy regulator CRE, the Federal Economic Competition Commission (COFECE), which is an antitrust watchdog, and telecom regulator IFT.

“If we’re going to save money, I’m for it. Because there was a lot of waste in the creation of (regulatory) bodies,” Lopez Obrador said at a regular daily news conference.

Lopez Obrador has promised to reduce public spending to free up more resources for the poor and his flagship projects.

The new merged regulatory body would be called the National Institute of Markets and Competition for Wellbeing and consist of five board members, according to a document presented by Monreal. It would allow annual savings of 500 million pesos ($22.4 million).

“The total annual budget of IFT, COFECE and CRE would decrease 21.05%, 500 million pesos annually, by creating the new regulatory body,” according to the document.

Lopez Obrador criticized his predecessors for backing large, bureaucratic regulatory bodies.

They were “supposedly autonomous, supposedly independent bodies, and most of the budget went there,” he said.

The opposition National Action Party criticized the proposal as a power grab.

($1 = 22.3188 Mexican pesos)