The Year of Leading Mexico from Behind for President Pena Nieto The Economist
go to original November 26, 2013

When Enrique Peña Nieto spoke at an Economist conference this month, he was reminded that this newspaper had cautiously endorsed him for president last year as the “least bad” of the candidates. The audience laughed nervously; easy-going in person, the president is rarely exposed to such public leg-pulling. But though his first year in office has had downs, it has had more ups. If he can bring home the raft of reforms that he has launched, he could transform Mexico.

That is a big if. The theme that has infused this year’s changes is competition. Mexico, ruled once again by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) which led it for 71 years until 2000, remains in the grip of monopolistic businesses and unions. With the formal backing of the two main opposition parties in the “Pact for Mexico”, Mr Peña has set out to rewrite parts of the constitution to weaken those entrenched interests. The aim, he says, is to boost Mexico’s lackluster economic growth and productivity and reduce the poverty which still afflicts about half the population. The legislative agenda is not yet complete, though Congress expects to wrap up the main reforms by December 15th. Even if it does, the challenge next year will be to enforce the new rules.

On paper, the scorecard is impressive (see table below). In education, the aim is to improve schooling in a country crying out for well-qualified workers. Teachers face tests that could cost them their jobs if they fail. The lavish-spending boss of their union has been arrested. The creation of an autonomous trustbuster that could curb the dominance of Telmex, the telecoms giant controlled by Carlos Slim, a multibillionaire, and of Televisa, the nation’s biggest broadcaster, is a belated attempt to open up the market for information in a society awash with young technophiles. A banking reform to boost lending in a country where credit as a share of GDP is about half the regional average is intended to help small and medium-sized businesses.



Read the rest at The Economist

We invite you to add your charity or supporting organizations' news stories and coming events to PVAngels so we can share them with the world. Do it now!