Consumer prices in Mexico increased 51.7% last...

Consumer prices in Mexico increased 51.7% last year, less than one-third the 1987 inflation rate, the state-owned Banco de Mexico announced. In releasing the economic figures, the central bank credited the government’s anti-inflation program with slashing inflation last year from 159.2% in 1987. The announcement vindicated the government’s optimism about 1989, for which it has predicted an inflation rate of 18% to 22%, a projection widely viewed among private economists as excessively optimistic.