Billionaire Slim Criticizes OECD Report on Mexico’s Phone Industry
February 2nd, 2012Source: Business Week
Billionaire Carlos Slim was out of context and off the mark in his criticism of a study finding a lack of competition in Mexico’s phone industry, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said.
Slim told reporters yesterday that the group’s report, released earlier this week, seemed to use data “pulled out of thin air.” The 72-year-old, who controls Mexico’s largest wireless and landline-phone companies, denied the study’s claims that Mexican carriers overcharged consumers $13.4 billion a year for phone and Internet services from 2005 to 2009.
Mexico’s government, which commissioned the study, is using it to validate efforts to create more competition in telecommunications. The findings support the government’s plan to auction off fiber-optic lines owned by the state power company and contracts to push high-speed Internet into communities where it’s not available, Communications and Transportation Minister Dionisio Perez-Jacome said this week.
“The OECD stands by its …
Is Mexico Finally Waking Up to This Key Concept?
January 30th, 2012
By William Gourg
The Greeks, 2,500 years ago, were onto something. Creating a concept such as synergy might have been one of their greatest inventions. Although the word has sometimes been overused and abused, synergy surrounds us nowadays. Synergies underlie mergers and takeovers, coalition governments, and civil society movements. More and more often we are starting to see public-private partnerships that promise the benefits of mutual cooperation.
Take a Deeper Data-Dive into Mexico’s Second-Tier Locations
January 19th, 2012
By Luke Bujarski
When shopping around for new site locations in developing countries, much of the decision process too often hinges on second-hand and potentially biased information. Oftentimes, data from a conference presentation or a promotional agency website are all you have to go on when taking that initial step into a new market. This is particularly true when considering untested, second-tier markets that have yet to prove their worth as global services platforms.
MexiCANs: The New Breed Needed for a New Era
January 10th, 2012
By Juan Carlos Rodriguez
After being out of Mexico for almost eight years, I returned to my native Guadalajara in November 2010, driven by the desire for closer ties between my daughter and her cousins, grandparents, uncles, and aunts.
My friends in San Diego asked over and over why I was leaving San Diego for Mexico. “It is dangerous,” they said.
In Software Testing, the Nearshore “Advantage” Starts to Really Shine
January 4th, 2012
Cliff Schertz: More maturity would help
By Dan Berthiaume
Latin America may not be the first region that comes to most people’s minds when they think of software testing, but Nearshore software development service providers are starting to offer a more sophisticated level of testing services. Cliff Schertz, CEO of Tiempo, a provider of software development and BPO services to US companies with development centers in Mexico, compares the maturity level of the testing market in Mexico to that of a “teenager.”
“Mexico’s software testing market is more mature than that in some developing areas like Vietnam, but is not on par with that in the more mature software development markets,” said Schertz. “For a lot of countries, the first initiative is to develop core software engineering talent. Behind that, they realize there is a big gap in testing capabilities.”
Mexico Climbs to Sixth Place in Global Outsourcing Ranking
December 7th, 2011Mexico recently rose five spots to become the sixth-ranked country worldwide in A.T. Kearney’s 2011 Global Services Location Index, boosted by depreciation in its currency and “increased nearshoring sentiment in the United States.” Now the highest-ranked Latin American country in the index, wages in Mexico fell 18 percent in dollar terms last year “as it was buffeted by economic headwinds from the United States,” according to A.T. Kearney’s summary of the index.
Mexico Diversifies Exports and Reduces Reliance on the United States
November 25th, 2011Source: The Vancouver Sun
For years after the North American Free Trade Agreement came into force, the main road to riches for many Mexican entrepreneurs was across the border. Now they are increasingly likely to cross an ocean instead.
Mexico’s foreign trade with the United States soared after the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which also includes Canada, kicked off in 1994, almost tripling in six years.
But having then become dependent on U.S. demand for 88 percent of exports, Mexican firms were heavily exposed to economic shocks across the frontier, and the economy was battered by the financial crash that hit Wall Street in 2008.
Since the crisis, Mexico has stepped up efforts to limit its reliance on the world’s biggest economy, ratcheting up trade with Latin America, Asia and Europe, aided by a depreciation in the peso against a range of currencies.
After pulling out of recession, Mexico …
FDI to Mexico Drops 16%
November 25th, 2011Source: Bloomberg Business Week
Mexico received 16 percent less foreign direct investment in the first nine months of 2011 than a year earlier, Economy Ministry data shows.
Foreign direct investment, or FDI, totaled $13.5 billion in the first nine months of this year, the ministry said in a report on its website today. Mexico registered $15.6 billion in investment during the same period last year, according to ministry data. The Ministry revised 2010’s FDI figure to $19.8 billion from $17.7 billion, the report showed.
Foreign direct investment, which last year almost matched the $21.3 billion Mexico received from remittances, is expected to reach $20 billion this year, according to Promexico, the country’s investment promotion agency.
Today’s report shows Mexico may not reach that goal, said Gabriel Lozano, a Banco Santander SA senior economist in Mexico City.
“I don’t see any investment project that could give it a boost,” Lozano said in a telephone …
Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party Regains Power
November 16th, 2011Source: The Guardian
The party that held power in Mexico for seven decades appears to have won a key state election before the country’s presidential race by transforming itself into the party of change.
Monday’s official vote count shows that the Institutional Revolutionary party, or PRI, surged to victory by winning back hundreds of thousands of votes from the leftist party that pushed it out of the governorship 10 years ago in a pattern that, according to polls, may be spreading across the country.
The PRI’s Fausto Vallejo Figueroa won by 35% to 33% over his closest competitor, Luisa Maria Calderón, who is the sister of President Felipe Calderón. Finishing a distant third, with 29%, was the party that has dominated the state in recent years, the Democratic Revolution party, or PRD.
The two losing parties immediately questioned the results and accused the PRI of aligning itself with organised crime to …
Q/A: New VC Fund Banks on Mexico’s IT Startups
November 14th, 2011By Luke Bujarski
Salazar: "Not enough entrepreneurs in Mexico"
Mexico’s IT startup community may soon be getting another injection of much needed venture capital from a California-based seed fund called MexicanVC. According to César Salazar, General Partner with MexicanVC, the big multinationals and integrated IT services providers are not the only ones looking to capitalize on low-cost IT talent and access to new markets. While never risk-free, turning a profit on IT startups can be a lot cheaper when done in Mexico than in the US. At least, this is the business model MexicanVC is applying as it looks to handpick the next round of applicants for their six-month mentoring program.
