Impact of global crisis on Mexican multinationals varies by industry, survey finds

The Institute for Economic Research (IIEc) of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and the Vale Columbia Center on Sustainable International Investment (VCC), a joint initiative of the Columbia Law School and the Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York, are releasing the results of their second annual survey of Mexican multinationals today.1 The survey is part of a long-term study of the rapid global expansion of the multinational enterprises of emerging markets. The present report focuses on data for the year 2009. Highlights In 2009, the 20 companies listed in table 1 below posted about USD 117 billion in foreign assets, 63 billion in foreign sales, and had 227,484 employees in their overseas operations. The top three companies on the list are CEMEX, America Movil, and Carso Global Telecom, which together controlled USD 86 billion in foreign assets, which was 73% of the total on the list. The leading sectors on the list are food and beverages (4 firms), non-metallic minerals (4 firms), and telecommunications (2 firms). In keeping with the tradition in Mexican outward foreign direct investment (FDI), most of the investments were undertaken in Latin America and the Caribbean and in North America −specifically the United States-. These regions were followed in importance by Western Europe. Mexican outward FDI has now also begun to appear in China, India, and Australia. The shares of all companies ranked in table 1 are publicly traded, with the exception of PEMEX, which is 100% state-owned, and Xignux, which is a privately held family-owned firm

New phase of development and knowledge capitalism: gramsci’s historical revenge?

Gramsci’s contribution to Marxism is based on the understanding of the historicity of capitalism, not only as a mode of production that prepares the historical-material conditions for scientific socialism (which is Marx's contribution), but as changing (historical) unities between economy, politics, ideology, and culture that represent historical phases of development within the mode of production. It is, in fact, this understanding that distinguishes Gramsci from the rest of the early Marxist theoreticians after Marx. In this sense, the problem that Gramsci poses in Prison Notebooks is how to explain, based on the Marxist theoretical framework, the emergence and decline of the historical phases of development of capitalism, without the (historical) crises that intervene in this transition resulting in a process of social revolution that leads to the scientific socialism foreseen by Marx. This unfolding of these developments was already evident at the time in which the Notebooks were written with the emergence of americanism and fascism. This article argues that the tremendous timeliness of Gramscian thought resides in the appreciation that, at the current time, just as in the 1930s, the transition to a new phase of the development of capitalism, for which the term knowledge capitalism is proposed, is verifiable, for which the technological-productive fundamentals have thus far been developed without its projection having yet taken place in the superstructure. From this flows a double historical revenge of Gramscian thought, since, on the one hand, it provides a valuable theoretical instrument for understanding and taking advantage of historical change, and, on the other, it offers major political strategic principles that at the current time, based on forms of production and autonomous social organization of the subaltern groups and classes within knowledge capitalism, have the historical-social space to contribute to the construction of an alternative hegemony characteristic of these classes and groups. To delve into this question, the article has been divided in three sections. The first section presents Gramscian theoretical tools for understanding historical change; the second synthetically explains the distinctive features of the new phase of development and characterizes the moment of its current unfolding in light of the previously mentioned theoretical instruments, and the third section discusses postcapitalist forms of production and social organization that could lead to the formation of alternative hegemonic social blocs in the framework of the emergence of the new phase of development that is becoming a historical epoch

International Monetary Fund: From Stabiliy to Instability (The Washington Consensus and Structural Reforms in Latin America

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) was created to set a standard for development and to facilitate the exchange transactions of the lnternational Financial System (IFS) in the framework of the established international economic order. During the last three decades, the IMF has transformed itself into an international financial organization whose main objective has been to act as a "lender of last resort" in the face of the instability generated by financial crises during this period. The Washington Consensus and the Structural Reforms in Latin America have jointly contributed to increase the instability in the region in a democratic context. It is therefore important to establish the reasons for the creation of a post war international monetary system and for the ongoing changes in the relationship between international financial institutions and the economic and political international arder. In addition, financial globalization and financial markets have fulfilled a strategic role in the performance of emerging economics, resulting from changes in the global financial system. Also, the development of capitalism and the economic reforms of the Washington Consensus have deepened the transformation of the economic structures of goverments, which have passed from authoritarian and regulated regimes to deregulated, democratic and market-driven systems. However, democracy and its significance on the path of economic, political social reorganization, has not given opportunities to the majority of the population, which has not seen the benefits from the reorganization of relations between countries in the process of globalization

Striving to overcome the economic crisis: Progress and diversification of Mexican multinationals’ export of capital

The Institute for Economic Research (IIEc) of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and the Vale Columbia Center on Sustainable International Investment (VCC), a joint initiative of the Columbia Law School and the Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York, are releasing the results of their third survey of Mexican multinationals today. The survey is part of a long-term study of the rapid global expansion of multinational enterprises (MNEs) from emerging markets. The present report focuses on data for the year 2010. Highlights In 2010, the top 20 Mexican MNEs had foreign assets of USDD 123 billion (table 1 below), foreign sales of USDD 71 billion, and employed 255,340 people abroad (see annex table 1 in annex I). The top two firms, America Movil and CEMEX, together controlled USDD 85 billion in foreign assets, accounting for nearly 70% of the assets on the list. The top four firms (including FEMSA and Grupo Mexico) jointly held USDD 104 billion, which represents almost 85% of the list’s foreign assets. Leading industries in this ranking, by numbers of MNEs, are non-metallic minerals (four companies) and food and beverages (another four companies). All but two of the 20 are firms whose shares are traded on a stock exchange. The exceptions are PEMEX, Mexico’s fully state-owned oil and gas firm, and Xignux, a diversified family-owned enterprise. The top 20 MNEs had 223 foreign affiliates (branches, subsidiaries, et al). As with their counterparts elsewhere in Latin America, Mexican MNEs show a very strong regional orientation. As annex table 2 makes clear, the top 20 overwhelmingly prefer to invest in Latin America. The next region of choice, with a substantial presence of Mexican affiliates, is North America. Europe (mainly the European Union) is a somewhat distant third. The presence of Mexican MNEs in Asia seems to be growing, if slow. In 2008, four of them had affiliates in Asia; in 2010, seven did

El desarrollo regional de México en el vértice de dos milenios

El desarrollo regional es un concepto inherente a la transformación de las regiones. Un proceso y un fin en las tareas de administración y promoción del crecimiento y bienestar del país. Como concepto se refiere a cambios cualitativos en los planos económico, político, social, ambiental, tecnológico y territoriales que sucede al interior de las unidades político administrativas del territorio nacional por lo que el desarrollo regional se asocia a cuestiones tales como el incremento de la producción y el progreso técnico, las tareas de gobernabilidad y la disputa por el poder político en las entidades territoriales, la distribución del ingreso, la preservación de los recursos y del medio ambiente en general y la organización territorial de la sociedad que habita al interior de las mismas. El desarrollo regional por lo tanto, tiene atribuciones en el tiempo y en el espacio. Conocer y documentar cómo se han desarrollado las regiones a lo largo de su historia tendrá necesariamente que tocar el devenir de las mismas en el futuro inmediato y en una escala de tiempo mayor

La industria siderúrgica en México

La política que sigue el Estado mexicano ante la crisis de la industria siderúrgica consiste en reestructurarla, entendiendo por ello introducir nuevas tecnologías, elevar la productividad, cerrar plantas atrasadas, despidos masivos de trabajadores y permitir al capital extranjero comprar parte de las deudas de las empresas estatales y privadas. Al problema del endeudamiento y de la baja productividad, hay que agregar la reducción del consumo nacional de acero, la mala organización de las empresas estatales, la falta de una política adecuada de precios y las medidas proteccionistas de Estados Unidos

Coloquio de La Habana: "Encuentro sobre la deuda externa de América Latina y el Caribe". Argentina

El problema de la deuda externa viene ocupando, en estos últimos años, un lugar central en el escenario económico y político de América Latina. El dramatismo de la situación ha sido subrayado repetidamente, y los indicadores que reflejan el comportamiento negativo del producto, la ocupación, la inversión, las presiones inflacionarias, los salarios reales, el drenaje de reservas internacionales y todas las demás magnitudes macroeconómicas relevantes, dan testimonio fehaciente de la gravedad de la crisis, en la que el peso abrumador de la deuda es el principal elemento determinante

La democracia en México desde el resultado de las políticas públicas vista por el desempeño en el desarrollo de sus entidades federativas

La democracia es un concepto que en la práctica garantiza el desarrollo de los habitantes de una sociedad. El desarrollo se entiende como el acceso a los bienes y servicios para mejorar el bienestar y llevar una vida digna. El papel del Estado es precisamente conducir a sus ciudadanos al desarrollo a través de la implementación de políticas públicas que permitan el acceso al desarrollo de manera igualitaria. Las desigualdades en el desarrollo reflejan los limitantes en las políticas públicas y en el papel del Estado, pero también nos indican la calidad de la democracia en esa sociedad. Hoy en día, la democracia no depende solamente de la voluntad del gobierno, sino de la participación de la sociedad civil. En este ensayo, analizamos, desde un enfoque teórico, lo que se entiende como democracia con relación al desarrollo iniciando con un breve repaso de la ciencia económica y su aportación a este concepto. Seguidamente hacemos una relación de la democracia con las políticas públicas. Para concretar esta relación entre democracia, políticas públicas y desarrollo, revisamos algunos indicadores más frecuentemente utilizados para evaluar el desarrollo en México por entidades federativas. A la luz de esos resultados, enfatizamos el papel que juega la sociedad civil en los procesos de democratizar el desarrollo para mejorar el bienestar

La innovación organizacional ambiental en las empresas manufactureras de la región centro de México

El objetivo de este trabajo es demostrar cuales son las empresas manufactureras de la región centro de México que realizan la innovación organizacional ambiental -medida por la obtención del certificado industria limpia que otorga la PROFEPA en dos o más ocasiones-, para ello se estimó la probabilidad de que dada las diferencias en el tamaño de las organizaciones empresariales consigan este certificado por dos o más veces, además, también se calculó cuáles son las firmas, según su tamaño, que tienen mayor probabilidad de tener el certificado de la PROFEPA por más de una ocasión. Nuestros resultados revelan que las unidades económicas medianas y grandes en comparación con las pequeñas tienen mayores posibilidades de alcanzar una certificación de industria limpia por más de un periodo, este hallazgo demuestra que las diferencias en el tamaño si cuentan a la hora de realizar la innovación organizacional ambiental. También, se deriva de nuestros resultados que la gran corporación es la que tiene mayores probabilidades de lograr la certificación industria limpia por dos o más veces, de lo anterior se infiere que este tipo de organización cuenta con bases más sólidas para llevar a cabo la innovación organizacional ambiental. Generalmente, estas grandes firmas son de carácter trasnacional, como General Motors, Volkswagen, Kimberly Clark, Bayer, Industrias Acros Whirlpool, entre otras; y se ubican en actividades productivas altamente concentradas, dinámicas y orientadas al mercado externo. Este hecho avala la tesis Shumpeteriana de que los determinantes del desempeño tecnológico e innovador de la empresa recaen en su tamaño (grande) y en la estructura de mercado (oligopólico) en que se desenvuelve