Mexico's new president, Enrique Peña Nieto, has proposed reforms that could make monopolistic industries like telecommunications more competitive, bolster oil production and improve the government's finances. The proposals are commendable and could transform Mexico's economy. But success is far from guaranteed.
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Mexico has long failed to take full advantage of its many assets, including big energy reserves, a growing middle class and access to the American market. One obstacle has been crony capitalist policies that have concentrated economic power in the hands of a few oligarchs. As a result, Mexicans pay much more for goods and services like phone calls, medicines and airfares than the citizens of most other advanced countries, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Mr. Peña Nieto is the young face of Mexico's grand old political party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which governed the country for more than 70 years and is responsible for many of its problems. He argues that it has changed and that he and the PRI are ready to take on vested interests like the broadcasting giant Televisa and the telecom colossus América Móvil, which is controlled by Carlos Slim Helú, who also owns about 8 percent of the Class A shares of The New York Times Company.
In recent weeks, Mr. Peña Nieto and leaders of the country's two other large parties agreed to introduce more competition in broadcasting and telecommunications by giving a new regulator the power to break up dominant companies and award licenses to new firms. Mr. Peña Nieto also plans to reform the country's tax code to cut down on evasion by corporations and the rich. And he wants to allow the country's state-owned oil monopoly to form joint ventures with foreign energy companies to improve its ability to produce oil from deepwater wells.
The big questions are whether and how these proposals will be implemented. The new regulator overseeing the telecommunications and broadcasting industries will need real authority and political backing to confront powerful companies that have undermined previous efforts to allow more competition. In the energy sector, policy makers will have to guarantee that concessions involving foreign oil companies are awarded fairly and transparently and are not handed out to a favored few.
One house of the Mexican Congress has already approved a new telecommunications law and changes to the constitution that could usher in education reforms that will pay off in the long run. Other proposals like tax reform have been delayed because other political parties oppose plans to expand the country's value-added tax to food and medicine, which are not currently taxed.
Mr. Peña Nieto, who took office in December, is not the first Mexican president to attempt big economic reforms, though he has moved further and faster than his predecessors, who were often stymied by the PRI. Now that the PRI is back in power after a 12-year absence, it must demonstrate that it can turn Mr. Peña Nieto's ambitious agenda into national policy.
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