By RICARDO CASTILLO
Curfew in Chihuahua
An alarming surge of covid-19 contagion in the Mexican border state of Chihuahua forced authorities to impose a mobility stoppage on all activities.
The curfew applies Monday through Thursday from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m., and will be enforced for the weekend starting on Friday, Nov. 6, at 7 p.m. through Monday, Nov. 9, at 6 am.
Chihuahua Governor Javier Corral earlier this week issued an executive order given the sudden spike of confirmed corona virus infection cases and deaths.
Meanwhile, Chihuahua maquiladora (in-bond assembly) industry president Pedro Chavira in Ciudad Juárez, at the U.S. border with El Paso, Texas, said non-essential industries will work at a 60 percent capacity four days a week and will shutter over the weekend.
The industries employ half a million workers in the state.
Chavira said infected workers did not get the disease at work, but either at home or at outside-of-work social events.
Corral said the curfew would last for as long as necessary.
In the meantime, all hospitals in major Chihuahua cities are full to the brim with covid-19 infected patients.
Michoacán Governor Meddles in US Election
Mexican Interior Secretary Olga Sánchez Cordero chastised Michoacán Governor Silvano Aureoles for posting a tweet on Friday, Oct. 30, asking Mexicans living in the United States to “not vote for Trump,” clearly breaching the law banning Mexican citizens from mingling into the internal affairs of a foreign nation.
Sánchez Cordero issued an official statement exhorting Aureoles “to behave like a public servant of Mexico,” respecting the Constitution “regarding the sovereignty and self-determination of other nations.”
Aureoles retorted that he was “deeply concerned” for the approximately 4 million Michoacán natives residing in the United States.
“They have been mistreated, offended and their rights attacked by Donald Trump since he was candidate in the prior elections,” he said. “Our migrants are not alone.”
Apparently, Aureoles did not attend the Diplomacy 101 course all governors get that tells them to keep their mouths shut regarding foreign affairs.
Mexican Economy Recovers
An economic recession period that started in October 2019 seemingly has ended as the Mexican economy began to show signs of recovery for the third quarter of 2020, the National Institute for Geography and Statistics (Inegi) report said.
The economy showed an increase of a 0.54 percent average on consecutive increase.
Moving the Mexican economy forward were industrial activities, retail sales and exports.
The report also said that a major bump for the economy was the lowering of interest rates imposed by the Bank of Mexico (Banxico).
Also helping the economy was the dollar-peso exchange rate, which on Thursday, Nov. 5, was in the range of 21.5 pesos per greenback, the lowest rate this year.
The Inegi economic report said that Mexican exports for the third quarter were nearly $30 billion, a 1.1 increase over 2019, when total yearly exports were $101 billion.
Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has forecast that the Mexican economy, though recovering mildly, would still have a steep plunge of minus 9 percent by the end of 2020.
Banks in Distress
The 51 banking institutions currently operating in Mexico had profits worth 163 trillion pesos for 2019.
Those type of profits, however, have all but vanished this year due to the covid-19 impact on the Mexican economy. The banks’ profits for 2020 are expected to dwindle to half their 2019 level.
For that reason, according to the National Banking and Stock Market Commission, banks will stop profit taking by stockholders in order to reorder their finances and offer customers support to help them heal their ailing finances.
Out of the 51 operating banks, only seven, which concentrate 80 percent of available funds, have a way of weathering through the pandemic.
The small- and mid-sized ones will face a “complicated” future, the commission said.
…Nov. 6, 2020