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 Two Austrian plants inaugurated in NL
With a US$20 million investment, the Austrian company Kopf inaugurated. two plants in Cienega de Flores municipality. Martin Kopf, the Company's world Director said that one of the plants, Zink Power, is the most modern galvanizing plant in the American Continent and is also the largest in all of Latin America.
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New North Safety Plant inaugurated
Before corporate executive officers from North Safety Products, the. Company inaugurated its new facilities in Mexicali, and at the same time celebrated their 10th anniversary. "It's been 10 years of North Safety in Mexicali and in the last few months we have experienced an accelerated growth so we moved to a larger building", said Jorge Lopez Bojorquez.
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Cosco Shipping Company starts operating in Lazaro Cardenas
Lazaro Cardenas Containers Port Terminal - Lázaro Cárdenas. Terminal Portuaria de Contenedores (LCTPC) - affiliate of Hutchison Port Holdings de México (HPH México), as of the first week July and up to next December, will start receiving one of Cosco's ships every week in association with Evergreen.
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Fleetwood de Mexico prepares facilities inauguration
Fleetwood de Mexico will hold an official ceremony. to inaugurate its operations here. Located in El Dorado Industrial Park, Fleetwood is the first RV's assembler in Mexico. Corporate Fleetwood Enterprise started negotiations last year to invest here and this year they started assembling RV's, which are units used by the final customer as vehicles.
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The Spaniard Group Aernnova will install a plant in Mexico
The Spaniard aeronautics company Aernnova. is planning to install a plant in Mexico, according to the Group's Chairman and Director, Iñaki Lopez Gandasegui. In an interview with the Spaniard financial journal, Expansion, he declared that the purpose is becoming - one of the most competitive companies building aeronautic structures in the world-, even though he would not disclose figures.
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Japan displaces the USA as world producer
Whoever thought the automotive crisis in the USA was an exaggeration., should check data from the Japanese Automobiles Manufacturing Association, JAMA. Upon closing 2006, Japan assembled 11 million 484 thousand 233 units compared to 11 million 351 thousand 289 vehicles assembled in the USA with a 6.3% growth for the Japanese and a 5.5% drop for the Americans.
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ARTICLE OF THE WEEK
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Mexican Reform Clouds View of Key Industry
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By: Jesus Cañas and Robert W. Gilmer
Southwest Economy, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas
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 For years, new jobs in Mexico's assembly for export plants have been a growth engine on both sides of the Rio Grande. Mexico reported monthly on employment, wages and production in the maquiladora industry, and those figures became key indicators for the border region's economy.
Recent changes in Mexican regulations on export-oriented industries mean these important barometers of border manufacturing activity have been lost-at least temporarily. The new rules merge the maquiladora industry and a program for homegrown exporters into Maquiladora Manufacturing Industry and Export Services, or IMMEX.
Mexico stopped publishing maquiladora data effective March 2007. Beginning in March 2008, the industry will be included in Mexican manufacturing reports. The first figures on IMMEX plants will be available at the same time-but without separate maquiladora data.
IMMEX will provide regional and industrial data similar to the old maquiladora reports in 2008, but for a year analysts will be without manufacturing data for states and cities along Mexico's northern border. The new data series won't mesh with the old, so long-term trends will be hard to track.
The regulatory changes reflect the evolution of a program that began in the 1950s as a simple "twin-plant" concept. Maquiladoras allowed U.S. manufacturers to establish capital-intensive operations on their side of the border, ship goods to Mexico for labor-intensive assembly and return them to the United States. Inputs moved into Mexico duty-free if returned to the U.S. in assembled form within a fixed period. U.S. tariffs applied only to the value added by assembly.
Over the years, the maquiladora industry evolved to include imports of machinery and equipment along with inputs, and it expanded from manufacturing to services, such as engineering, call centers and coupon processing. The original maquiladora program forbade domestic sales, but the North American Free Trade Agreement completely removed the restriction by 2001.
Blurring the Lines
After these changes, maquiladoras became similar to companies operating under the Program for Temporary Imports to Promote Exports (PITEX), created in 1990 to allow qualifying domestic producers to compete with maquiladoras. In terms of exports and imports, the maquiladora program is larger than PITEX, and it's been growing in recent years (Chart1). PITEX plants are usually in the older industrial belt located in central and southern Mexico. Maquiladoras are more common in states along the U.S.-Mexico border (Table 1).
Under PITEX, the "export-services" parts of domestic plants received maquiladora like benefits, allowing them to import materials and export-oriented machinery. In recent years, no significant differences existed in the customs status of maquiladoras and PITEX plants' export operations. As differences between the two programs diminished, questions arose about why maquiladora data should be reported separately. As a result, Mexican authorities decided to merge the two export-oriented programs. Under IMMEX, the combined programs also share similar fiscal treatment.
In the past, maquiladoras were exempt from value-added taxes; the IMMEX program extends this benefit to PITEX companies' export services. Income tax differences will persist only to the extent that maquiladoras qualify for treatment as foreign entities. The elimination of fiscal differences solves a growing problem of companies' shifting between maquiladora and PITEX status for tax advantages and causing large month-to-month swings in regional and national data unrelated to economic events.
In time, the IMMEX data may provide useful information for tracking manufacturing activity in Mexico's border states. For a while, though, analysts will be without a key source of data.
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This document is not intended to solve any particular problem, but rather is the author's personal opinion on the law described herein. Should you have any doubt or comment please contact Daniel Basurto at the e-mail address dbasurto@lexcorp.com.mx or contact the attorneys of the Lexcorp Environmental Law Group at the e-mail address gal@lexcorp.com.mx.
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MEXICO'S WEEKLY HEADLINES
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| » The fiscal reform is viable and has merits: CEESP |
| » The government promises to spend better |
| » Last opportunity for the fiscal reform |
| » Limited the TLC between Mexico and the European Union |
| » From stable to positive the debt of Mexico |
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