Category: Mexico

Banco de Mexico today left the amount commercial banks must borrow overnight at higher rates unchanged at $7.2 million daily. The central bank’s board said Friday that the pace of annual growth in consumer prices slowed to 4.4 percent in March from 5.4 percent in November. Core inflation, which excludes energy and food prices, slowed to 3.6 percent from 3.8 percent.

Mexican state-run oil giant Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) will cut exploration investments this year by 25 percent to $1.5 billion. The company expects to maintain investments in exploration within the range of $1.5 billion and $2.0 billion over the next few years. Pemex has 17.7 billion barrels of proven reserves.

In a victory for Mexican President Vicente Fox, Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled the president had the right to allow private companies to generate electricity in the country. The lower house of Congress had asserted that only the government had the right to generate electricity and was seeking to annul all concessions awarded to private companies. The ruling comes as Fox steps up calls for Congress to open the economy to private investment in energy.

Mexico’s state oil company Pemex auctioned a round of short-term bonds worth $44 million on the Mexico City stock exchange last week. The 28-day fixed-rate bonds pay a 9.78 percent fixed annual interest rate. Credit ratings agency Standard and Poor’s assigned its mxA-1+ rating to the issue, Fitch its F1+ (mex) rating and Moody’s its MX-1 rating.

Mexico’s dominant fixed-line telecom company Telmex, owned by Carlos Slim, has agreed to sell its shares in MCI to Verzion Communications. Telmex has 8.1% of the company. The agreement was reached after more than two months of negotiations between MCI, Qwest Communications and Verizon.

Mexican consumer prices rose 0.45% in March as higher international oil prices pushed up prices for gasoline, natural gas and jet fuel. The Central Bank also said prices for agricultural goods are rising. However, the core inflation rate, which excludes volatile energy and food prices, fell to 0.31% last month from 0.42% in February.

There are many reasons to dislike Mexico City’s mayor Andrés López Obrador. He is a populist and a nationalist with retrograde ideas on economic policy. Amlo, as the mayor is known, believes in democracy but centralizes power in his own hands. He is personally honest, but surrounded himself with crooks. Yet to even consider barring the country’s most popular politician from running in next year’s presidential election shows how insecure Mexico’s ruling elite has become. His impeachment will begin Thursday on charges that he ignored a court order stopping the city from building a hospital access road on private land.

Mexico is Latin America’s biggest economy and one of just three in the region with an investment grade rating. But its political sophistication lags far behind Brazil, Colombia or Chile. The Revolutionary Institutional Party ruled Mexico for 71 years until the current conservative government of President Vicente Fox took office in 2000. Removing Amlo from the race would ensure the PRI’s return to power.

He has promised a campaign of civil disobedience if he is removed from office and prevented from running for president. Markets are in turmoil as well they might. Economic upheaval often coincides with government changes. The next government’s legitimacy would suffer if Amlo is barred from the election. Mexico is no banana republic, so it should stop behaving like one. It cannot hope to evolve into a modern and sophisticated state until its politicians grow up.

Mexico’s state oil company Pemex plans to issue up to 20bn pesos (US$1.8bn) of bonds, most of which will have variable interest rates, in the second quarter this year, the company said in a statement.