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  • Mexico takes on major-league economic overhaul

    April 22, 2015

    REGINA — With a half-wink, Cecilia Villanueva Bracho calls it the “mother of all reforms”.

    By that, the Mexican consul-general for Alberta and Saskatchewan means the package of changes working its way through Mexican politics and economics — very big stuff indeed for an economy that had been locked in place for decades.

    Most striking to Canadian businesspeople is a change in the status of Pemex, the Mexican federal government’s energy corporation, created in 1938 when the private oil industry was nationalized.

    But Pemex no longer has this monopoly, with private firms given the ability to work on their own or enter joint ventures with Pemex, which has been instructed to become professional and responsive, Villanueva Bracho told the Regina and District Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday.

    A similar change is coming over Mexico’s government-owned electrical generating commission, which is also moving into renewable energy generation, she said.

    Villanueva Bracho said these, and the accompanying changes in regulations and even the Mexican constitution, were overseen by the administration of President Enrique Pena Nieto of the Party of the Institutional Revolution (abbreviated “PRI” in Spanish), which took the presidency in 2012 after 12 years out of office.

    She added other changes in Mexico’s legal and electoral systems are intended to create more rights for citizens. Deregulation of the banking and telecom sectors and other reforms are expected add a full one per cent to annual economic growth and create hundreds of thousands of jobs, she added.

    Villanueva Bracho said Nieto, despite getting less than a majority of votes in the controversial 2012 election, was able to get agreement for these sweeping changes by capitalizing on a pent-up desire for institutional reform and by bringing the two major opposition parties into discussions even before he was inaugurated.

    The consul-general, who works out of Calgary, also noted the many recent anniversaries in relations between Canada and Mexico, like the 70 years since diplomatic links were created between the two countries.

    There’s also the 40th anniversary of an agreement that brings Mexican farm workers to Canada — initially to Ontario, but now about 20,000 workers annually, countrywide, including 140 to Saskatchewan.

    Last year was the 20th anniversary of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which embraces the two countries, plus the U.S.

    As well, there’s an academic exchange program that’s brought five students and three instructors to Saskatchewan, said Villanueva Bracho, who estimated there are 15,000 Mexican citizens living in Alberta and Saskatchewan.

    wchabun@leaderpost.com
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