por admin » Mié May 19, 2010 8:44 pm
Mexico esta condenado a la mediocridad si no se permite la competencia, dice el antitrust (antimonopolio) jefe Eduardo Perez Motta.
Mexico es la segunda economia de latinoamerica.
Mexico Growth to Slow Without Antitrust Measures (Update1)
Share Business ExchangeTwitterFacebook| Email | Print | A A A By Jens Erik Gould
May 19 (Bloomberg) -- Mexican antitrust chief Eduardo Perez Motta said failure to pass measures to increase competition in industries dominated by few companies would slow the country’s growth to the “mediocre” levels of previous years.
Latin America’s second-largest economy may expand as much as 5 percent this year after shrinking the most since 1932 last year, according to central bank estimates. Before the global financial crisis, annual growth in Mexico averaged 2.4 percent from 2001 to 2008, compared with 3.7 percent in Brazil, according to the International Monetary Fund.
“Growth in recent years has been mediocre,” Perez Motta said in an interview in the Mexico City offices of Bloomberg News. “In order to maintain the growth that will happen this year, we require competition.”
Mexico’s lack of competition curbs job creation and economic growth by keeping prices for telecommunications and other utilities higher than in Latin American countries such as Brazil, according to the World Bank. Proposals to boost competition would affect companies such as America Movil SAB, which serves more than 70 percent of Mexican mobile-phone users.
A bill approved last month by the lower house of congress that seeks to beef up the power of Perez Motta’s Federal Competition Commission has yet to come to a vote in Mexico’s Senate. The measure would allow the commission to impose bigger fines on companies that collude on prices. The fines could amount to as much as 10 percent of the revenue the companies report in Mexico. The antitrust agency can currently fine companies a maximum of about 82 million pesos ($6.38 million).
‘Clearly Worse’
“In everything that has to do with competition, Mexico is clearly worse not only than developed countries but than other emerging countries in Latin America,” Jorge Sicilia, chief economist for the U.S. and Mexico at BBVA Bancomer in Mexico City, told reporters today. “Any measure to favor competition would lead us and possibly many analysts to elevate the potential growth of Mexico.”
Mexico is ranked 60th among 133 world economies on competition measures, behind Indonesia and Azerbaijan, according to the World Economic Forum’s 2009-2010 Global Competitiveness Report.
Perez Motta said that a proposal by Manlio Fabio Beltrones, head of the Institutional Revolutionary Party in the Senate, to replace him and his fellow commissioners all at once would jeopardize the agency’s independence and politicize it.
“This would make the agency more subject to decisions of a political character,” Perez Motta said.
Fining Drugmakers
The antitrust agency plans to issue in four to six weeks a final decision on fines for Eli Lilly & Co., Baxter International Inc. and four other drugmakers after the commission found they had colluded from 2003 to 2006 to keep prices high on sales to Mexico’s social security agency, Perez Motta said.
The commission may modify its Feb. 23 decision to fine the companies 21.5 million pesos ($1.67 million) apiece after the firms appealed to the commission to reconsider the ruling, he said.
The peso fell 0.9 percent to 12.8645 per dollar at 4:12 p.m. New York time from 12.7450 yesterday.