As the peso continues to lose value against the dollar, Manuel Herrera Vega, president of the Confederation of Industrial Chambers (Concamin) has confidence that Mexico’s central bank (Banxico) will intervene in the short term to prevent the peso from losing more value.
“We are immersed in an environment of uncertainty,” he said at a business forum organized by Concamin Wednesday. “The measures that Banxico could take include injecting dollars, like they’ve done in the past, or changing interest rates to prevent capital flights, or some mixture of the two.”
While admitting that increased production costs due to the appreciation of the dollar have been passed on to consumers in certain cases, especially in imported goods or goods that have foreign-made components, Herrera Vega maintained that there has been no generalized price increase for Mexican consumers related to the recent appreciation of the dollar.
“We’re not talking about generalized price increases, or even about an increase in price of the basic market basket, but the pressure on production costs is going to become stronger and we are going to need to take serious measures to stop that pressure from seriously hurting the economy,” he said.
Herrera Vega said that industry has played a vital role in preventing prices from increasing.
“It has been industry that has been responsible for keeping prices steady and resisting volatility in the exchange rate,” he said.
