President Andrés Manuel López Obrador apologized on Thursday for having advanced the announcement about the increase in the interest rate, which was to be made by the Bank of Mexico (Banxico), under the argument that he thought that information was already public.
López Obrador revealed that fact during his morning press conference. He announced that the rate would rise to 6.5%, when Banxico was scheduled to announce it at 1:00 p.m.
“I want to offer an apology to the president, the governor of the Bank of Mexico (Victoria Rodríguez Ceja) and the deputy governors, because I received the information last night, that they had made the decision to increase the rate to 6.5%,” the president said this afternoon during his participation in the Banking Convention in Acapulco.
“I thought it had already been made public and this morning I talked about it, but I want to tell you that I reaffirm my commitment to respect the autonomy of the Bank of Mexico,” he added.
From early on, the fact that López Obrador came forward to give this information, despite the fact that it corresponded to Banxico, generated criticism and accusations that the president was violating the rules of confidentiality in the matter.
Read: How Banxico votes if interest rates rise and why AMLO’s ‘early morning’ violates confidentiality rules
In the afternoon, during his meeting with the country’s bankers, López Obrador also took advantage of the forum to “recommend” that Mexican businessmen be the ones to buy Citibanamex, which will be sold by Citigroup.
“We will not put any obstacles in this transaction. We will only respectfully recommend the following: it is nothing more than a recommendation, because it is an economic, commercial operation, but we would like the new shareholders or owners to be preferably Mexican, to be aware of their contributions to the public treasury, to comply with the payment of taxes that such a purchase would imply, that they are natural or legal persons with economic solvency to protect the money of customers,” he said.
López Obrador also pledged that his government would not present reform initiatives that would affect the profits of the financial sector.
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