Mexico: Economy Continues Slowly to Our Targets – November 2010- IXE BANIF – Monthly Analysis

Mexican growth motors continue to balance out

Since last month, we have experienced a re-balancing of growth drivers, with improvement of local demand and a slow-down in exports, the main growth motor. Exports have reduced their YoY growth rate from the nearly 50% of the beginning of the year, although it remained at a high 21% in September. We expect this deceleration to continue until 2011.

Mexico – Monthly Allocation – November 2010

During October, we renewed our good expectations for growth of the Mexican economy with the release of statistics for September: a) Internal retail sales increased 4% YoY; b) consumer confidence grew 12% YoY; c) 780k new jobs created in the first nine months. Concerning job creation, this level was a record high for the same period and mainly due to the export industry. We maintain our expectation for the creation of 650k new jobs in 2010 (seasonally, there is job reduction at year-end) and 530k in 2011.

Despite these changes in export and local demand, we maintain our expectation of a 4.4% GDP growth for 2010 (while market consensus remain at 5%) and 3.7% for 2011. For our 2011 forecast, local demand still has to catch up, as we predict a further decline in exports.

For our November portfolio, we have added Femsa and increased the weight of Grupo Mexico from 15 to 20%. We have reduced the weight of Mexchem from 15 to 10% and withdrawn Soriana.

Mexican tidbits

Inflation remains under control, although the first data collected for October, indicating a 0.5% increase, was slightly above our and market expectations. We continue expecting 4.5% for 2010, with the belief that interest rates increase no earlier than October 2011, although the growth of inflation in the recent past may allow postponement to the beginning of 2012.

The Mexican Peso reduced its volatility in October, appreciating from the 12.6 P$/US$ at the beginning of the month. Our forecast is currently at 12.4 for the end of 2010 and 12.2 for the end of 2011.

Source: Banif – IXE, 05.11.2010

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