1996-11-27 Local Press - APEC Meeting
Article Index
Zedillo at APEC Meeting
President Zedillo is in the Philippines to participate in the meeting of the group of Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). In a document to be presented by the Mexican delegation later this week, the government calls on APEC to reduce tariff and non-tariff barriers, open up to foreign investment, and speed up economic liberalization. In a press conference, Mexican Trade Secretary Herminio Blanco harshly criticized China, South Korea, Taiwan and Japan for their high levels of protectionism. Prior to traveling to Manila for the APEC conference, Zedillo was in China, where he and President Jiang Zemin agreed to fight against the US Helms-Burton law, and supported the re-election of UN Secretary General Boutros Ghali. (La Jornada, 23 November; El Financiero, 25 November).
Huge Price Increases in 1997
The Finance Secretariat for the Federal District announced its intention to increase the price of water and property taxes up to 200% in 1997. City legislators said that such enormous increases were unjustified. The property tax would affect mostly middle class families, although some poorer neighborhoods would also be affected. The water increase is expected to be about 30% for 500,000 poor families, while it would be significantly higher for families with greater resources and higher consumption levels. (La Jornada, 23 November).
Supreme Court to Resolve Bank Crisis
Supreme Court sources predicted last week that the high court wilt resolve the issue of 15 commercial banks legal "inexistance" (see Update #99) "without too many complications." According to these sources, since the banks were legally constituted as National (public) Credit Societies before the privatizations, even if their conversion to "anonymous societies" was illegal, then they stilt exist as National Credit Societies. Debtor groups have insisted that these 15 banks are not legally constituted as anonymous societies, and therefore can not operate In any case, numerous lawyers agree that former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari and his Finance Minister Pedro Aspe broke the law in unilaterally extending the time period for the privatizations. There is reportedly a possibility that the two will be called to testify on the matter. (51 Financiero, 22 November).