Weekly Report - 17 February 2004

TOURISM | Reaching a new peak. Mexico's earnings from tourism last year reached a new record of US$9.46bn, or 6.8% more than in 2002. This, says tourism minister Rodolfo Elizondo, raised Mexico from 13th to 10th place in the world ranking of tourism revenues. Mexico has been achieving the tourist industry's dream: a substantial increase in spending per visitor. Last year, as earnings shot up, arrivals actually declined by 5.1%, to 18.6m.

As an extra bonus, Mexico is managing to keep more of the money generated by tourism. Last year its tourism balance left a surplus of US$3.2bn, which was 14.5% higher than that of 2002. Worth noting: 79% of the country's investment in tourism is made by Mexicans.

VULNERABILITY | Becoming more oil-reliant. The leading private-sector think-tank, Centro de Estudios Económicos del Sector Privado (Ceesp), has drawn attention to the fact that Mexico last year increased its dependence on oil revenues. The contribution of oil exports to fiscal revenues amounted to M$534bn (US$48.6bn at the present exchange rate): this was 24.6% more than in 2002 — and actually 15% higher than the government had calculated in the budget. Non-oil revenues, meanwhile, grew by only 4.3%; those coming from taxes, by 5.3%. This, says Ceesp, is highly risky, because `there is no certainty that the oil market will maintain its dynamism over the medium and long terms.'

Another risk was highlighted by energy minister Felipe Calderón. `The fact that Pemex is sustaining the bulk of public spending,' he said last week, `implies that it can't devote as much as it needs to exploration for new reserves.' And, he added, as things stand right now Mexico's reserves will last for only 13 years more.

EMPLOYMENT | Winners & losers. Inegi, the official statistical institute, reports that the number of people in employment in the last quarter of last year reached 41.4m, or 1.53m more than a year earlier. It also said that employment in the services increased by 1.3m, and in industry by only 129,000, while the primary sector shed 373,000 jobs. The number of people employed in the informal sector, meanwhile, rose to 11.2m. Just over 1m people were officially regarded as unemployed.