Mexican Group Forms Pact to Spur Growth
Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim led a group of business executives, union leaders and academics calling on presidential contenders to commit to a program they said would help spur economic growth and create jobs.
About 400 business executives, including Grupo Televisa Chief Executive Emilio Azcarraga, signed an accord Thursday in Mexico City that calls for private investment in roads, energy, water, health and education. Mario Molina, the 1995 Nobel laureate in chemistry, read the 12-page plan, called the National Accord for Unity, Law, Development, Investment and Employment.
“This is one of the most important pacts ever formed in Mexico,” said Manuel Medina-Mora, who runs Citigroup Inc.’s operations in Latin America from Mexico.
“We hope it will create enough consensus so that the measures Mexico needs to remain competitive are taken.”
Slim, whose telecommunications, banking and industrial companies account for almost half of Mexico’s benchmark stock index, has been critical of President Vicente Fox’s failure to make good on a campaign promise to make Mexico’s economy, Latin America’s largest, grow at a rate of 7% annually. The Mexican economy has expanded an average 1.6% a year since Fox, a former Coca-Cola Co. executive, took office in December 2000.
Mexicans will elect a new president in July.
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