News Summary for March 5th, 2009

Blame game begins…
++ Deputy Foreign Affairs Secretary for North America Carlos Rico Ferrat said that it is not “in the Mexican government’s hands” to resolve the issue of drug trafficking to the United States as long as there is a market for it… Therefore, he said, it is the Mexican government’s task to reroute drug stopover routes to other nations.

++ President Felipe Calderón said that drug trafficking to the United States is also linked to U.S. authority corruption… He insisted that it is the United States which is responsible for narcotics trafficking and said he was certain President Obama would fully assume that responsibility.

++ Former president Vicente Fox denied he was guilty of omission in battling narcotics trafficking during his term, as Interior Secretary Fernando Gómez Mont charged.

More problems in Juarez…
++ A fight among rival gangs in a prison in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, killed 20 inmates and wounded another seven… Authorities ruled out that the incident was a riot.

Some good news…
++ The Mexican Stock Exchange market rose 4.28 per cent, its biggest increase this year.
The peso also rose, by 19 cents… At the selling rate the peso closed at 15.39 pesos per dollar and the buying rate was 14.69 pesos per dollar.

Banks facing thought regulations…
++ The Senate Finance Committee began an initial review of proposals seeking to regulate banking commissions and interest rates…

++Chief of the Mexican Banking Association Enrique Castillo Sánchez said he opposed limits or controls on the interest rates banks charge saying that those kinds of measures would affect credit availability.

++ PRI deputy Jorge Estefan Chidiac said his party would propose a bill to annul the car ownership tax, but that measure would hinge on President Calderon’s government allotting to states the 30 billion pesos they would lose by nixing that tax.