MSG015G/01E MEXICO-FINANCE: Zedillo Announces Cabinet Change, Emergency Plan
MEXICO CITY, Dic 30 (IPS) - Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo announced on Thursday that he will replace the Treasury Minister and institute an emergency plan to confront the economic crisis resulting from the recent 50 percent devaluation of the peso.
In a nationally broadcast message, Zedillo announced the resignation of Treasury Secretary Jaime Serra, who will be replaced by Guillermo Ortiz, currently Secretary of Communications.
The President reiteratered the need to acheive economic stability and development, while mentioning nothing of the current political crisis in the Southern state of Chiapas, where guerrillas and 60,000 government troops are engaged in tenuous armed truce.
Zedillo said the emergency programme must include "an accord between the production sectors" - owners, labour unions, and rural workers - under government coordination.
The sectors "must be economically realistic... and stop a race between devaluation and inflation," he said.
The plan will require "fiscal adjustments to balance the effect of the devaluation and the increase in the deficit... and a necessary reduction in public spending from what was planned for 1995," Zedillo said.
Also to be included will be "measures to deepen structural change, especially in the sectors which require rapid modernisation to increase productivity and economic competitiveness."
In addition, Zedillo announced "the integration of a financial support fund, with international funding of an amount which will permit stabilisation as soon as possible."
The fund "can be developed rapidly thanks to the good faith of the financial community, our primary trade partners, international organisations, and private banks."
Zedillo said the change in Economic Minister's was due to the need to "concentrate, integrate and execute the emergency economic programme efficiently and credibly."
Ortiz, like Serra and Zedillo, was a member of the economic team of former President Carlos Salinas.
He is a member of the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and was an economics professor at Stanford University and two Mexican institutes.
Ortiz has also been an assistant researcher with the Department of the Presidency, director of economic research with the Bank of Mexico, and Vice Minister of the Treasury.
© Inter Press Service (2014) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service