 President Carlos Salinas, elected in 1988, began a significant sector reform, creating the National Water Commission or "Comisión Nacional del Agua" (CONAGUA) in 1989, which today remains a key player in Mexican water supply and sanitation (see below).At the beginning, it was given the task of defining federal policies to strengthen service providers through technical assistance and financial resources.CONAGUA, among other suggestions soon recommended to strengthen the decentralization process, improve the transparency of tariffs and introduce tariff autonomy, based on real costs for the service provision and free of political influence.