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 Ford sells maquiladora in Ciudad Juárez
As part of its financial efficiency plan "Way Forward", Ford reached. an agreement to sell El Jarudo Plant and its fuel rail manufacturing operations, located in Ciudad Juarez, to Cooper Standard Automotive, for an amount not yet disclosed. According to a press release issued by Ford this is the first sale of Automotive Components Holdings business and represents significant progress in its strategy to fix operations.
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O´Donnell announces, Cuautitlan Izcalli Logistics Park.
O´Donnell Mexico, a leader in the development, acquisition. and management of institutional quality logistics and manufacturing buildings in Mexico, leased 51,237 SF (4,760 m2) to Logisfashion in its O´Donnell Cuautitlán Izcalli Logistics Park. Raúl Moreno, Logisfashion CEO commented Logisfashion select O´Donnell Logistics Park for it high quality facilities, strategic location, the opportunity to manage continuous operations fot its clients, O´Donnell professional property management services, and O´Donnell flexible expansion options to support the company´s growth.
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Manufacturing activity up 4.5 points in March
Last March, the Trend Aggregated Indicator (TAI), that shows the. probable path of manufacturing activity, reached 56.9 points, with a 4.5 points increase when compared to February, but a 0.2 points year- to-year decrease. The Mexican Statistics Agency, Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Geografía e Informática (INEGI) explained that TAI monthly increase in March is due to a growth in four from its five components, while in the year-to-year comparison, the drop is due to a fall in three components.
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Hoover will open plant; creating 800 jobs
The plant Hoover, the vacuum cleaners manufacturer, has in North Canton, Ohio. will be closed, and operations will be consolidated in two manufacturing plants located in Ciudad Juarez an El Paso, at times when production is growing, but so are doing costs. Hoover has a molds injection plant in El Paso Texas and an assembly plant in Juarez, and at least 800 jobs are expected to be created between both cities, even though the precise amount in each plant has not yet been defined.
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BRIC now outdoes NAFTA
The presence of Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) in Mexico's. trade is more and more relevant, and only last January trade exchange with BRIC outdid trade with NAFTA partners, according to figures provided by Banco de Mexico. China even displaced Canada as second importer into Mexico, analysts added. Last January, Mexico's trade exchange with BRIC countries went up 21.5%, a figure higher than the 0.7% increase in the trade Mexico exchanged with the USA and Canada, the Bank of Mexico (Banxico) added.
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Cemex purchases the Australian Company Rinker Group Limited
Cemex informed today they have entered. an agreement to purchase the Austrialian Company Rinker Group Limited, in a transaction for US$15.3 billion, which mill make of Cemex the number one cement company in the world. Cemex announced they will pay US$15.85 per share for Rinker, an offer that was unanimously accepted by the Board of Directors of this Australian Company.
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ARTICLE OF THE WEEK
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A Mexican´s Point of View Engineers and technicians: The professionals of the future
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 There are currently around 450,000 students enrolled in engineering careers al over Mexico. Only in the State of Nuevo Leon, for example, there are more than 60,000 engineering students among the several levels of the program, and an average of a little over 5,000 new engineers are graduating only in the State of Nuevo Leon.
This figure puts Mexico in a position of advantage when compared to our main competitors in the rest of the world. The business and technological sector in the United States are increasing their interest in Mexican engineers versus our competitors like China and India.
Unfortunately Mexico is still considered a source of illegal immigration to the USA; however, one step at a time, the education level goes up, mainly in northern Mexico, where there is the highest education level in Mexico.
According to a report issued by the Mexican Universities and Higher Education Institutions Association, from 2000 to this date the increase in the number of students in engineering programs went up a little over 20%. However, the interesting point does not lay precisely in the increase per-se, but in the type of equipment available for engineering programs to train both students and professors.
 A lot of technology and equipment are being donated by companies, mainly foreign. This has proved to be an extraordinary success (triple helix: Private Enterprise, Government and Academic Institutions), because that technology is being used to train the companies' future employees.
This has brought very positive consequences to Mexico. Graduates from several engineering schools are finding more and better jobs and this makes graduates stay in Mexico, instead of emigrating to the United States. In addition, the number of Mexican students enrolled in engineering programs in the United States has dropped. There are currently a little fewer than 14,000 Mexican students in the engineering programs in the United States, a 2% drop when compared to previous years. Also, some universities have exchange programs or even "joint degrees" with universities in the United States and Europe. This allows for students in these programs to have the experience of understanding other work cultures, which in the future could translate into an easier integration to foreign work cultures.
 Not long ago I read a news report saying that Samsung, the multi-national company, was offering grants to train engineers graduated from universities in Monterrey in order to transfer them to one of their plants at another state in Mexico or abroad. Competitiveness of engineering students graduated from universities in Monterrey is considered to have the highest level not only in Mexico but also internationally.
It is even more interesting to observe that other companies and transnational corporations such as LG Electronics, SIEMENS, Whirlpool and Honeywell among others, have started implementing industrial and technological projects in the design and engineering fields. This kind of projects used to be reserved only for the companies' countries of origin and/or headquarters. Nowadays research and development projects are being carried out in plants located in Mexico, which are no more devoted only to assembly, maquila and manufacturing purposes, as it used to be for several years. This has caused a moderate transition from a manufacturing-based economy to an economy based on knowledge.
 Other states in Mexico have observed the huge advantage Monterrey has due to the education level and competitiveness of its students at the universities in Monterrey metropolitan area. Human capital is one of the greatest strengths Nuevo Leon has when competing to attract foreign and domestic investment, not only with other states in Mexico, but even with most countries in Latin America.
To sum-up, the states in northern Mexico have a significant advantage in the academic sector and therefore in human capital and qualified labor. Our main competitors in other areas in the world also consider Mexico a competitor, but a strategic alliance must be made with our neighboring countries to develop new engineering programs that contribute to the improvement of that human capital we proudly have in Mexico's north.
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MEXICO'S WEEKLY HEADLINES
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| » Balanced fiscal reform is urgent: Carstens |
| » Mexico, less vulnerable to the deceleration in United States |
| » Delay of SAT platform, knock the efficiency
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| » Mexico, in zone of economic turbulence |
| » The GIP would grow 3, 9% in the 2008
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