Weekly Report - 11 March 2010 (WR-10-10)

MEXICO | Poverty. A new report on 3 March claimed that the recession which started in 2008 has plunged 8m people into poverty. Rising poverty levels are likely to complicate the government's efforts to restore law and order, especially in states bordering the US. The gloomy prognosis comes not from a left-of-centre NGO but from the Centro de Investigación en Economia y Negocios at one of the country's main business schools, the Tecnólogico de Monterrey (Tec).  
The report noted that the number of people living in poverty in Mexico in 2006 was 44.7m, according to official statistics from the Consejo Nacional de Evaluación de la Polí­tica de Desarrollo Social. The Tec reckons that this year the number of people living in poverty will be about 53m. The government's problem is that even if the economy grows by 4% in 2010, poverty levels are unlikely to fall significantly.
Alarmingly, the Tec reckons that 49.3% of the population is now below the poverty line. This is only a marginal improvement on the 53% poverty rate in 2000, when President Vicente Fox became the first president from outside the traditional Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) to take office.