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Mexican update
...public finances have rarely been in better shape. Thanks to policies put in place by Ernesto Zedillo, who presided over the country during and after the tequila crisis at the end of 1994, the budget is balanced.
In 2000, it was still running a budget deficit equivalent to 1.1 per cent of gross domestic product. Net public debt, meanwhile, has fallen consistently and is now just 23 per cent of GDP. Moreover, much of the external debt was swapped for peso-denominated debt during Mr Fox’s administration.
This year, net external debt accounts for roughly 7 per cent of GDP compared with 24 per cent in 1995. “It has all become boring,” says Damian Fraser of UBS in Mexico City. “But that is fine. We love boring.”
Even inflation, which has started to creep up again after it dipped below that of the US for the first time in 2005, still appears to be under control.
Consensus forecasts from the private sector suggest it will finish the year at about 3.85 per cent.
Here is much more. But no, one correction is needed, Mexico is never a boring place:
Mexico’s country music stars are being killed at an alarming rate — 13 in the past year and a half, three already in December — in a trend that has gone hand in hand with the surge in violence between drug gangs here. None of the cases have been solved. All have borne the signs of Mexican underworld executions...
Posted by Tyler Cowen on December 22, 2007 at 05:20 AM in Current Affairs | Permalink
Comments
Somehow the FT article managed not to mention the key role oil plays in Mexican finances, providing perhaps 30% of governement revenue. Since the article does mention that production is falling (although it doesn't mention how rapid the fall is) and it mentions that there is no consensus on how to reform the state-controlled industry, I think this is a rather significant omission.
Posted by: matt wilbert at Dec 22, 2007 7:08:05 AM
The issues of PEMEX, oil revenues, and the potential for energy reform are treated in the following piece of the same FT survey on Mexico. You can find it here: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/efffd0f6-a7c2-11dc-9485-0000779fd2ac,dwp_uuid=d1651c66-a7c0-11dc-9485-0000779fd2ac.html
Best regards.
Posted by: Alejandro Hope at Dec 22, 2007 8:17:08 AM
Today Mexico approved an increase in the minimum wage. The new figure for workers in Mexico City is around US $4.80 per day. (The minimum daily wage is slightly lower for workers in other parts of the country.) Only about two-thirds of economically active Mexicans belong to the sector governed by such regulations; the rest are independent workers, employers, and so forth.
Spanish-language link:
http://mx.news.yahoo.com/s/22122007/38/negocios-salario-m-nimo-diario-m-xico-aumenta-18-centavos.html
Posted by: Mexico Lover at Dec 22, 2007 12:12:09 PM
this is kind of unrelated, but I find this article, via Drudge Report, interestingg.
http://travel.independent.co.uk/news_and_advice/article3274422.ece
Mexico City just doesn't come across as the capital of Latin America.
It seems like that honor has to go to a Brazilian city.
Posted by: thehova at Dec 22, 2007 12:21:32 PM
thehova,
Why does Latin America have to have a "capital"? Does Europe have one?
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Dec 23, 2007 1:31:20 AM
As a followup, while I am not going to argue that Mexico City is Lat. Am.'s
capital (as I do not see any city being its capital), it has at least as
much claim as any other city in Latin America for such a claim. For starters,
it is the largest in Latin America, and still second largest in the world
(after Tokyo, although Mumbai is closing fast).
Also, it is a true primate city in the sense that Tokyo, Paris, Moscow, and
only a handful of other cities are, with everything there, political capital
of a major nation, and a leading center of economic, cultural, intellectual,
and other activities in its nation and at the global level. The next largest
city in Latin America, Brazil's Sao Paulo, cannot make such a claim, and while
Buenos Aires can make such a claim in Argentina (and may have more beautiful
European-looking buildings, giving it that "Paris of South America" air), it
is at best a close rival to Mexico City, not ahead of it. It has nothing to
compare with the Zocalo or the Museum of Anthropology or the Plaza of Three
Cultures. To the extent it is a capital of culture, it is European culture,
as with its Teatro Colon, which I think is the world's largest opera house.
And while Brazil is larger than Mexico, the latter is the largest Spanish-speaking
country in the world (in population), and most of Latin America speaks Spanish,
unlike Brazil.
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