Chinese retailer Miniso plans to open 92 new stores in Mexico this year, increasing its presence to a total of 200 stores.
The company said the new store openings were part of a larger push to expand into new markets in Latin America, in addition to reinforcing its presence in Panama, Colombia and Mexico.
The low-cost retailer and variety store chain has also attracted the interest of significant investors. In February, Grupo Sanborns announced that it had reached an agreement to invest in the company.
“Miniso has been a success since it was introduced [to the Mexican market] in 2016,” said marketing director César Medina.
Although Miniso has not yet reached Baja California or Sonora for logistical reasons, he said, it has stores in central Mexico, the Bajío region and in Monterrey, the three areas where it first opened.
It has since expanded into the Riviera Maya, Mérida, Oaxaca and Chiapas. “At our current pace, we are opening a new store every two weeks,” Medina said.
The company said each of its Mexican stores sees an average of 1,500 shoppers per day, 29% of whom make a purchase. That number is on the rise, along with the number of Mexican businesses interested in opening local franchises.
Last week, the company launched a new marketing campaign called “Efecto Miniso.” The 25-million-peso program is giving away nearly 20,000 stuffed animals, and asks recipients to take photos with their new stuffed companions and share them on social media.
Sales of stuffed animals account for 10% of Miniso’s total sales in Mexico.
A tourist from the United States was attacked by a shark last week while swimming at a beach in Troncones, Guerrero.
According to local media reports, 32-year-old Alex Wilton was swimming about 20 meters from shore at around 5:30pm last Thursday when a shark bit him on his right leg, leaving a gash about 20 centimeters long.
The man’s girlfriend and others at the beach helped him out of the water and took him to a private clinic in Zihuatanejo for treatment.
Cresencio Reyes Torres, mayor of La Unión de Isidoro Montes de Oca, the municipality where Troncones is located, said Wilton returned to the United States yesterday and that he was in good health.
The mayor denied that local authorities and tourism operators had tried to conceal information about the attack as was reported by some media outlets.
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“. . . I couldn’t say anything about it because I didn’t have precise information so my wife went to see the patient . . . and that’s why today I can offer an opinion . . .” Reyes said.
The mayor added that he didn’t expect a downturn in tourism as a result of the shark attack, explaining that local authorities will take steps to protect beach users by employing lifeguards, erecting signs to warn tourists to take precautions and possibly placing shark nets off the coast.
According to local fishermen, this is the season for cool ocean currents, which bring bull sharks closer to shore. In response, some hotel operators are urging authorities to monitor local waters to avoid further attacks.
A surfer from the United States was killed by a shark in an attack in Troncones in April 2008 and the next month, a Mexican surfer died after being bitten by a shark at a beach in Pantla, a community about 20 kilometers north of Zihuatanejo.
Mexico's export growth placed it ahead of Canada last year. el economista
Mexico overtook Canada to become the 12th largest exporter in the world last year, statistics show.
The value of exports from Mexico increased by 10.1% in 2018 to US $450.92 billion, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi), while its Canadian counterpart, Statistics Canada, said that Canadian exports totaled US $449.85 billion, an increase of 6.9% compared to 2017.
It marks the first time that the value of Mexican exports has exceeded that of Canada.
With total exports of just under US $2.5 trillion, China was easily the world’s biggest exporter last year, according to World Trade Organization (WTO) data.
The United States and Germany were the second and third biggest exporters, with total foreign sales of US $1.66 trillion and $1.55 trillion respectively.
Japan, the Netherlands, South Korea, Hong Kong, France, Italy, the United Kingdom and Belgium took out positions 4th to 11th.
The biggest contributors to Mexico’s export earnings were cars, petroleum, computers, auto parts, trucks, electrical conductors and televisions.
Mexico achieved strong export growth in 2018 even as tough negotiations to reach a new North American trade agreement continued to take place, creating uncertainty about the future of its relationship with its largest trading partner, the United States.
The leaders of Mexico, the United States and Canada finally signed a new trade pact on November 30 but it won’t take effect until it has been ratified by the legislatures of the three countries.
Luis Donaldo Colosio at the Tijuana rally where he was murdered on March 23, 1994. (Archive)
Twenty-five years ago today, Luis Donaldo Colosio Murrieta, presidential candidate for the then-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), was assassinated at a campaign rally in Tijuana, Baja California.
Only one man, Mario Aburto Martínez, was convicted of Colosio’s murder. He was sentenced to 42 years in prison.
But millions of Mexicans doubted or outright rejected that he was the mastermind of, or even committed, the crime.
Twenty-five years later, people continue to deny that Aburto is the true culprit. Most fingers instead point at the PRI – an inside job against a candidate who was trying to shake things up a little too much and made some powerful enemies in the process.
On March 23, 1994, Colosio arrived in Tijuana on the campaign trail for that year’s presidential election, which he was almost certain to win.
Colosio, left, and then-president Salinas.
According to journalists covering the campaign, the rally in the poor Tijuana neighborhood of Lomas Taurinas at which Colosio was shot was not originally on the candidate’s itinerary for that day.
At around 4:00pm, Colosio arrived – without an excessive security entourage – at the venue that would host the rally.
He appeared to be in a good mood, smiling and greeting the people who had gathered to hear him speak. Just over an hour later, he was shot twice, first in the head and seconds later in the abdomen.
The 44-year-old candidate was rushed to a Tijuana hospital but hours later he was pronounced dead.
A man – supposedly Aburto – was arrested at the scene of the crime but many people believe that a different man – the real Aburto – was convicted of the crime. In other words, the killer was replaced with an innocent man.
After a long and seemingly comprehensive investigation – and a confession by Aburto – the federal government declared that the 22-year-old was the sole culprit, although many people suspected that there were two gunmen.
Candidate Colosio at a campaign rally.
Miguel Montes, the first of five special prosecutors who worked on the case, believed that Aburto had not acted alone based on the fact that Colosio was shot twice and that the bullets had apparently come from different directions.
Four other men, including former police officer Vicente Mayoral Valenzuela and Jorge Antonio Sánchez Ortega, an intelligence agent for the now-disbanded Center for Investigation and National Security (Cisen), were arrested in connection with the assassination.
But the hypothesis that more than one person was responsible for the murder was abandoned after Aburto admitted that he acted alone.
Building the case against him, authorities established that Aburto suffered from borderline personality disorder, a condition they contended contributed to his actions.
Olga Islas de González Mariscal took over responsibility for the investigation in July 1994 after Montes resigned and five months later she declared that Aburto had indeed acted alone.
Another theory regarding Colosio’s murder is that organized crime was responsible.
Guillermo González Calderoni, a former police commander, said in a 1998 television interview that the Arrellano-Félix Cartel was responsible for the murder.
A total of 29 different versions of events involving organized crime were considered by the federal attorney general’s office, including one that Colosio’s campaign was funded by Colombian drug money or by now-convicted drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
According to three versions of events, Aburto had links to drug trafficking organizations.
However, authorities said there was insufficient proof to substantiate any of the organized crime hypotheses.
Yet another theory contends that Colosio’s own party was involved.
On March 6, 1994, Colosio gave a speech in front of the Monument to the Mexican Revolution in Mexico City in which he spoke of social problems in Mexico and said that corruption and impunity existed within the PRI.
Colosio’s family at a procession in his memory in his Sonora home town.
“I see a Mexico that is hungry and with a thirst for justice, a Mexico of mistreated people . . . women and men afflicted by abuses of the authorities or by the arrogance of government offices . . . I declare that I want to be the president of Mexico to lead a new stage of change in Mexico,” he said.
The speech is considered the moment in which Colosio broke ranks with then president Carlos Salinas de Gortari and signaled that he would take the party and the country in a different direction.
Following the speech, there was speculation that Colosio would be replaced as the PRI’s candidate by former cabinet secretary Manuel Camacho Solís. However, just 17 days after the controversial speech, Colosio was murdered.
Ernesto Zedillo, Colosio’s campaign manager, was chosen as the new PRI candidate and went on to win the election and serve as president until the year 2000.
The theory that the PRI was the mastermind of Colosio’s murder – and that president Salinas perhaps even ordered it – is the most widely believed by Mexicans.
The candidate’s father, former PRI senator Luis Colosio, maintained until his death in 2010 that people in power were responsible for his son’s death.
But authorities ultimately concluded that the political motive for the crime was not supported.
According to Laura Sánchez Ley, a journalist who has investigated the Colosio case for years and wrote a book about it, Aburto wasn’t the man authorities painted him to be.
Sánchez said that she concluded that Aburto most likely wasn’t “the crazy man” that authorities said he was.
She also said she received information showing that the government used shocking tactics to coerce Aburto’s family into confessing that they knew that he planned to kill Colosio.
“It turns out that during the days after the murder, Mario Aburto’s family started to be terrorized by the Mexican government so that they would confess that they knew that Mario would commit the murder . . . Authorities physically and sexually abused the younger girls in the family, they started to terrorize them at night by shooting at their house,” she said.
Sánchez, along with the anti-graft group Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity (MCCI), with which she collaborates, won a legal battle late last month that enabled the 25-year-old investigation into Colosio’s murder to be declassified.
She said there are “a lot of contradictions” in the information contained in the 10,000-page file that calls the official version of events into question.
“There were contradictions in the declarations” made by witnesses, Sánchez said, explaining that seven of nine police officers who made statements weren’t at the scene of the crime.
“There were contradictions in the big truths” proffered by authorities that “make you reconsider how certain the truth that they told us [really] is,” she added.
At President López Obrador’s daily press conference yesterday, United States reporter Jovanny Rivera Huerta shared a letter written by Aburto’s parents, who fled to the U.S. after Colosio’s murder.
“They ask you to re-open the Colosio case. The have a lot of faith in your word and in the transparency you have given the government and the country,” he said.
The president accepted the letter and said that he would read it and pass it on to other officials to see “what comes of it from a legal point of view.”
López Obrador urged authorities to keep investigating the case before declaring “I’m really sorry and I always regret the murder . . .”
Colosio’s family were among about 100 people who marched in his memory today in his home town of Magdalena de Kino, Sonora. The parade was headed by his son, Luis Donaldo Colosio Riojas and his family and two of the assassination victim’s sisters.
Royal Dutch Shell will begin importing fuel into Mexico via land and sea routes this year to supply its gas stations across the country.
Murray Fonseca, Shell’s Latin America sales director, told the news agency Notimex that the company will start bringing gasoline into the country by rail before the middle of the year and that deliveries by ship are expected to begin in the second half of the year.
Fonseca said that Shell has 31 oil refineries around the world as well as its own storage facilities and means of transport
“. . . We seek to integrate [our operations] and that’s what we’ll do in Mexico at some point,” he said.
Shell has been operating in Mexico since September 2017 but selling gasoline supplied by Pemex.
In addition to bringing its own fuel into the country, Shell plans to open another 100 to 200 gas stations in Mexico before the end of the year to take its total number of outlets to between 300 and 400.
Both company-owned gas stations and franchises will be among the new openings.
Fonseca said that Shell’s sales in the 11 Mexican states where it operates have increased and that the entry of the new federal government hasn’t had any effect of the company’s expansion plans.
“We’re still very interested in Mexico, it continues to be a very important country [for Shell] . . . We’ve said that we’re going to invest more than US $1 billion in the next 10 years if conditions are maintained.”
Easter is expected to bring more tourists this year.
Hoteliers in the resort destination of Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo, Guerrero, are looking at the April Easter vacation period with optimism as a result of bookings that are already higher than last year’s numbers.
The vice-president of the local hotel association explained that occupancy rates last year peaked at 70% during Easter week, but reservations so far for the same period this year are at 76%.
Although the holiday period overlaps with that of foreign visitors, particularly Canadians, Jesús García Mendoza said most visitors will be national, traveling from Monterrey, Mexico City and the central Mexico region of El Bajío. Not only are they the most numerous but they spend the most.
García warned that highway blockades could have a negative impact on the destination’s positive early numbers and asked for state authorities to help avoid situations that could affect an otherwise successful Easter vacation period.
Construction of a new 117-million-peso (US $6.13-million) IMSS hospital in La Paz, Baja California Sur, is slated to start in June.
First announced in September, the new facility will boast consultation rooms for 14 family doctors and seven for preventative medicine to provide health services for the 160,000 beneficiaries of the federal social security program in the municipality.
The new facility is expected to start operating in two years at the latest.
The number of IMSS beneficiaries in La Paz has been on the rise since 2013. The state is the third largest recipient of immigrants in the country, with its population growing by 6% every year.
IMSS representative Homero Davis also explained that the state is the fastest growing in terms of its workforce, meaning that the demand for medical services is growing at the same time.
He said some medical facilities are operating at 150% of their capacity.
In order to meet the growing demand, IMSS recently hired 63 physicians, assigning 24 to La Paz, 20 to facilities in the south of the state, six for Loreto and Comondú and 12 for Guerrero Negro.
Eighteen percent of the wells that supply water to residents in Torreón, Coahuila, exceed the national standards for acceptable levels of arsenic in drinking water, according to a report by the municipal water department.
Tests found arsenic levels above 0.025 milligrams per liter in 21 out of 114 of the city’s water sources.
But according to the newspaper El Universal, if the World Health Organization’s standard of 0.01 milligrams per liter was applied, 82% or 94 of the city’s water sources would be out of compliance. There are only seven filters in the city capable of removing arsenic from water, but one is out of service and two others are not fully functional.
Local environmentalist Gerardo Jiménez González said that efforts should focus on restoring the city’s aquifer rather than investing in filters and water treatment plants, which he considered are only temporary solutions.
“They extract more water than is permitted, which obliges them to drill deeper, which in turn pollutes the water. “
Regional National Water Commission (Conagua) director Óscar Gutiérrez Santana agreed with Jiménez that deeper drilling likely contributes to arsenic contamination but warned that the renewal of the aquifer could be a long process.
“The presence of arsenic in the aquifer means that it takes decades for the water to replenish itself and improve in quality.”
He added that every year Torreón uses nearly double the 519 million cubic liters of water that is naturally replenished during the same period. Mayor Jorge Zermeño said that in addition to arsenic pollution, deeper drilling also means a higher operating cost for water treatment plants.
A resident of one of the neighborhoods most affected by arsenic contamination told reporters that she only purchases bottled water to avoid contact with the city’s poisoned tap water, though she worries that children still drink the contaminated water from drinking fountains at school.
Jiménez González pointed to increased incidences of skin diseases, cognitive defects in children and cancer among Torreón’s residents, which he alleged were entirely due to the elevated levels of arsenic in the water.
There were similar findings recently in the Laguna region of Durango and Coahuila, where at least 50 of 190 wells contained dangerous levels of arsenic. Jiménez González was skeptical of Durango’s proposition to build new treatment plants, which he criticized as a deflection of the core issue.
President López Obrador announced an urban development plan for Acapulco, Guerrero, yesterday with the allocation of 8 billion pesos (US $419 million) for restoration work on housing and public spaces in marginalized neighborhoods.
López Obrador said programs designed to stimulate the economy and propel growth starting with the lowest rungs of society, both in cities and rural areas, will move Mexicans out of poverty. He hoped the program would avoid creating two Acapulcos separated by a gulf of economic and social inequality.
Territorial and Urban Development Secretary Román Meyer Falcón said the government will provide financial aid to provide water and waste services, improve roads, install street lights and improve public spaces dedicated to sports, recreation and culture in 26 neighborhoods in Acapulco.
He said that for many years Acapulco and many other cities have prioritized more lucrative forms of urban development with special emphasis on attracting tourist dollars, but that families with less means are often left far behind.
“The state has an obligation to make cities more humane and egalitarian with quality services and public spaces.”
The president presented his plan for Acapulco in the context of a larger initiative to combat poverty in which the federal government will directly distribute 300 billion pesos (US $15.7 billion) to programs that benefit seniors and students, as well as provide no-interest loans to small businesses and artisans.
López Obrador claimed that the money for the programs became available following extensive corruption investigations and dismissals. He admitted that some agencies may operate more slowly than usual, like a “rheumatic elephant,” due to the purges.
He promised to return to Acapulco in three months to check on the programs’ progress.
López Obrador, left, presents the official gavel of office to new banking association president Niño de la Rivera.
Mexican banks will eliminate commissions on digital accounts, the president of the Mexican Banking Association (ABM) said yesterday.
Luis Niño de Rivera made the announcement during a closing address at a bankers’ convention in Acapulco, Guerrero, stating that the banking sector respects ruling party Senator Ricardo Monreal’s legislative proposal which seeks to regulate and reduce bank commissions.
“Within this context, we emphasize the importance of our commitment to self-regulation . . . which is evident in the decision to reduce commissions on digital accounts to zero. I repeat, zero commissions for digital accounts,” Niño de Rivera said.
The new ABM president, who is also the CEO and chairman of Banco Azteca, also said that achieving “inclusive prosperity” and financial inclusion were among the challenges faced by banks.
Niño de Rivera pointed out that 41.7 million people in Mexico don’t have bank accounts and 54.5 million don’t have access to credit.
The banking sector is committed to offering financial services in 500 municipalities across the country that don’t have banks, he added.
In an earlier address at the convention, President López Obrador called on bankers to reduce the commissions they charge their customers including those on remittances sent to Mexico from abroad.
“. . . There are a lot of banks, there is competition and bankers will have to offer better conditions to customers and that will allow the . . . commissions to come down,” he said.
He reiterated a commitment made in November that his government would not bring in legislation that would regulate commissions.
The president added that he hopes to return to the same convention next year to give a prize to the bank with the lowest commissions.
