The Secretary of Finance (SHCP), Arturo Herrera, rejected the controversial reform project to the Bank of Mexico Law (Banxico) that would endanger the autonomy of the entity by forcing it to buy currencies that commercial banks cannot enter the financial system.
Reform project to the Banxico Law
Defenders of the bill, approved by the Senate in early December, argued that would help Mexicans with limited access to the financial system, such as migrant families and hotel workers, who are paid in dollars.
However the Banxico condemned the initiative, saying that it was an affront to his autonomy, could force him to absorb money from drug cartels and put his reputation at risk before international financial authorities.
“The only thing this proposal was going to do is transfer the problem that these commercial banks had to the central bank (Banxico), because the central bank would have had the same problem: how to export these dollars,” he said. Herrera in interview.
Herrera stated that 99.3% of remittances arrived in Mexico through formal financial channels, not in cash.
“If it is a 0.7% problem, it is a problem that we can solve through operational mechanisms (…) and it does not necessarily involve making a change to the Bank of Mexico law.”
About the economy, Arturo Herrera He said that Mexico expects to contract by almost 9% this year due to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic; In addition, he predicted 4.6% growth next year, but noted that it could be even more, depending on the progress of the COVID-19 vaccination program.
“In the year where there has been the greatest stress for public finances around the world, we were able to maintain the levels of net debt that Congress had approved us in October of last year, when I did not know that there was going to be COVID-19” .
- Mexico could return to normal levels of economic activity in the coming months, driven by new public-private investment projects in infrastructure and energy, he added.