Pena Nieto May Back Bill Easing Investment Caps, Economic Adviser Says Nacha Cattan - Bloomberg News
go to original October 7, 2012

Mexico’s incoming administration may support a bill by President Felipe Calderon to ease foreign investment caps, including a 49 percent limit on holdings in fixed-line phone companies, the president elect’s deputy economic adviser said.

If the bill “boosts competition and doesn’t endanger national security frameworks or strict sovereignty, it probably has possibilities,” Ildefonso Guajardo said in an interview today in Mexico City. “You have to re-evaluate where these restrictions still make sense,” and caps in the land-line sector “probably won’t pass the test.”

Incoming President Enrique Pena Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party takes office Dec. 1.

Calderon’s government will send a bill to Congress with proposals to ease restrictions on foreign investment in the next couple of weeks, Deputy Economy Minister Jose Antonio Torre said today in an interview. Officials are still determining which sectors the bill will address, Torre said, adding that transportation, telecommunications and financial services are “restricted.”

The Mexican peso rose 0.2 percent to 12.8279 per dollar at 12:16 p.m. in Mexico City. It touched an intraday high of 12.8214 per dollar following Torre’s comments.

Mexico’s antitrust and telecommunications regulators have both called for the elimination of the 49 percent limit on foreign ownership of land-line telecommunications companies to encourage competition. The current law also includes a 25 percent cap on domestic airline stakes and says broadcasting services must be exclusively under Mexican control.

To contact the reporter on this story: Nacha Cattan in Mexico City at ncattan@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Joshua Goodman at jgoodman19@bloomberg.net.

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