Woooosh
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Pain Of Global Downturn Persists In Mexico
Latest prediction is an 7-8% economic contraction for 2009.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1143213...
"In a country where nearly half the population already lived below the poverty line, the global economic downturn has slashed all of Mexico's largest
sources of revenue. Oil profits are in a free fall. Automotive exports declined 40 percent this year. Swine flu and Mexico's warring drug cartels have
battered tourism. And cash sent home from Mexicans working in the United States is dropping at an unprecedented pace.
Alejandro Villagomez is a professor of macroeconomics at the Tecnologico de Monterrey, one of the country's top private universities. He predicts that
Mexico's economy will contract 7 to 8 percent in 2009"
\"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing\"
1961- JFK to Canadian parliament (Edmund Burke)
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JESSE
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We have the most stupid politicians in the world, what else should we expect.
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Bajahowodd
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Anyone see a disconnect here?
http://www.svherald.com/content/2009/10/30/mexican-president...
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vandenberg
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| Quote: | Originally posted by JESSE
We have the most stupid politicians in the world, what else should we expect. |
And we have the most conniving, crooked low-life ones. 
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Eugenio
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There's no doubt that Mexico is experiencing an economic downturn - but the Central de Abasto has it's own unique problems apart from the recession -
namely competition with Walmart/Costco:
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2009/10/14/20091014me...
Colossal market in Mexico fades amid Walmart era
34 commentsby Chris Hawley - Oct. 14, 2009 12:00 AM
Republic Mexico City Bureau .
MEXICO CITY - It was 1 a.m., potato time in Mexico's mother of all markets.
They came in by the truckload, dozens of trailers heaving up to the loading docks to discharge the previous day's harvest into giant potato-cleaning
machines. Brokers picked through potato sacks, sealing deals with nods and notes scribbled on slips of paper. There was no time to lose: Soon, the
carrots would arrive, then the green beans and fish and flowers.
For 27 years, this huge wholesale market, known as the Central de Abasto, has stood as an urban marvel and the centerpiece of an economy once tightly
controlled by the government. A five-story, concrete colossus of 3,755 warehouses connected by miles of passageways, the Central serves as a hub for
food and other goods that eventually end up in supermarkets, public markets and street stands. Half the country once got its food from here.
But times are changing. Walmart, Costco and other retailers are building their own megawarehouses and forging deals directly with farmers. Public
markets and street vendors, the Central's core customers, have lost customers to chain supermarkets. Small-business owners go to Sam's Club for
supplies.
"Four years ago, I was buying 20 tons a day here," distributor José Flores Lazcano, 67, said as he watched wet potatoes pour out of a washing machine.
"Now, it's 10. We're not as important as we used to be."
Mexico City's market is the biggest of 64 wholesale markets built in the 1980s and early 1990s as part of the Mexican Food System, a government plan
to guard against famines in the wake of several severe financial crises.
It was one of Mexico's last experiments in central economic planning, said Gerardo Torres Salcido, a professor at the National Autonomous University
of Mexico who has studied the wholesale markets.
"It's something the United States doesn't have, these huge hubs for food," Torres said. "Up there, companies have their own warehouses, and the supply
lines are much more independent."
Mexico City's Central de Abasto opened in 1982, sprawling across an area as big as 600 football fields on the southeastern edge of the capital.
The smells of apples and bananas, of dill and cilantro and dried chiles fill the half-mile-long passageways of its main building. A network of
bridges, underpasses and elevated parking lots designed by architect Abraham Zabludovsky moves customers and trucks smoothly around the complex.
Thousands of "diableros," or cart-pushers, unload and transport merchandise.
The Central has its own 700-member police force, its own garbage-processing plant, 17 bank branches and a day-care center. But soon after it was
completed, Mexico's centralized economy began to change, Torres said. In 1988, President Carlos Salinas de Gortari took office and began dismantling
trade barriers, selling off government-owned enterprises, opening the doors to foreign chain stores and laying the groundwork for the 1994 North
American Free Trade Agreement.
Retail chains have since exploded. Walmart of Mexico had 753 supermarkets and discount stores in 2008, up from 225 in 2000. Comercial Mexicana had 230
stores, up from 167 in 2000.
Membership warehouses such as Costco, Sam's Club and City Club nearly tripled in eight years, from 57 in 2000 to 152 in 2008. The chains built their
own massive distribution centers. In the 1980s, the Centrales de Abasto handled 80 percent of Mexico's food, said Alfredo Neme, president of Mexico's
National Confederation of Wholesale Market Merchants. Now, it's about 20 percent, he said.
By 2005, about half the tomatoes and onions sold by Mexico City supermarkets were bypassing the Central and going straight to the chains' own
distribution centers, and the trend was spreading to other products, according to a study.
Martin Hernández, who collects zucchinis from small farmers in Puebla state and brings them to the Central, said his sales have dropped by half since
2004 because supermarkets have expanded contracts with farmers.
Raúl Carlos Reyes - a vendor of green beans, peas and chiles - said he used to sell six-hundred 154-pound sacks each day. Now, he sells the same
amount of sacks, but each one is only 88 pounds.
Some large farms that had their own warehouses at the market have subdivided their space and rented it out to smaller vendors who mostly handle retail
customers, Torres said.
In some cases, the shift to direct sourcing has driven down prices for farmers because the supermarkets tend to be more selective about their produce.
But they also demand more expensive packing - cardboard boxes instead of wooden crates, for example, or plastic trays that packing companies have to
rent from the stores. That means customers don't always get cheaper produce, according to a 2006 study of Mexico's system by Michigan State
University.
Neme said his confederation is urging its 90,000 vendors to stay relevant by modernizing and introducing services that supermarkets want, such as
artificial fruit-ripening, Internet ordering and packing in shelf-ready boxes.
"Mexico's economy has changed," he said, "and the Centrales de Abasto can't go on the way they used to."
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Woooosh
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It's my experience here in Rosarito and in our home city of Torreon- that Mexicans prefer to buy their produce and sundries at the open air markets.
Maybe it the freshness or the social aspects of an open air market, but they are always packed. My family uses them almost exclusively- they never go
to the brick and mortar grocery stores unless they forgot something or is something the outdoor markets don't have.
\"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing\"
1961- JFK to Canadian parliament (Edmund Burke)
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chanelrobs
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Registered: 11-19-2009
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| Quote: | Originally posted by JESSE
We have the most stupid politicians in the world, what else should we expect. |
I see and we people are also foolish to vote them in their seats right now..
Regards,
chanelrobs
http://pretvoiture.org
[Edited on 11-19-2009 by chanelrobs]
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wessongroup
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Mood: Suicide Hot line ... please hold
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Eugenio
Not too hard to follow... as we have seen the same thing happen in the U.S. and it continues now...
They are still playing good guy bad guy with the economy.. remember the "green shoots" ........
Well here is some more "GREEN SHOOTS"..
"General Electric Capital Corp., a unit of General Electric Co., is expected to price its planned Islamic bond worth at least $500 million at around
1.75 percentage points over U.S. Treasurys, a banker aware of the deal said Wednesday."
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