Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Mexico's Boom?

According to a report from Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) Mexico’s elite upper class includes 1,340,000 people or 1.7 percent of all the country’s inhabitants. By contrast, the country’s lower class includes 66.4 million residents, who collectively represent 59.1 percent of the country’s total population. To put this in perspective, for every upper class person in Mexico there are 49 in the lower class.

According to a Forbes report, in 2013 “Carlos Slim from Mexico clocked in with a net worth $4 billion more than a year ago and is the world’s richest man for the fourth year in a row, with a fortune of $73 billion.” In 2012 Slim’s America Movil telecom company reported total revenues of $62 billion, a 6 percent jump from 2011.  There are  15 Mexican billionaires, according to Forbes’.

Three of the top five wealthiest individuals in Latin America are from Mexico. Alberto Bailleres Gonzalez the chairman and partial owner of Industrias Peñoles, is the second wealthiest man in both Mexico and Latin America. Forbes estimates his net worth at $18.2 billion. German  Larrea Mota Velasco, the owner of mining giant Grupo Mexico, a company that reported net income of over $2 billion last year, is Mexico’s third wealthiest businessman, and the fifth wealthiest man in Latin America. Forbes estimates his net worth at US$16.7 billion.

According to the latest INEGI study, most middle-income Mexican families haven’t had the same success as the country’s billionaires over the last few years. While Mexico’s top income decile saw its income jump 4.5 percent between 2010 and 2012 as the country’s economy rebounded from the global financial crisis, many middle-income families saw their household income drop. Although Mexico’s middle class does appear to be growing and consumer goods and luxury goods sales are rising it’s important to remember that many middle-class families actually saw their household incomes fall over the past two years. Retail sales in Mexico grew by less than 4 percent in 2012.

A a wide income gap persists between urban and rural areas in Mexico.The worst poverty in the country is still found in the hills of southern states such as Guerrero, Oaxaca, and Chiapas.

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