MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico’s Finance Minister Arturo Hererra on Monday announced a second package of 29 infrastructure investments assembled between the government and the private sector worth some 228 billion Mexican pesos ($11.4 billion).
The package follows an initial 297-billion-peso raft of investments set out last month, and heralds a further thawing in what have often been frosty relations between Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and business groups.
The investments are aimed at lifting Mexico’s ailing economy and creating much-needed jobs.
“I estimate that for the next quarter, the first three months of next year, we will return to the situation we were in before the pandemic. That is my forecast that we will be able to recover and we will begin to have greater economic growth,” said Lopez Obrador.
Carlos Salazar, head of Mexico’s Business Coordinating Council (CCE), said the investments could lead to the creation of some 400,000 new jobs.
($1 = 20.0683 Mexican pesos)
(Reporting by Anthony Esposito, Ana Isabel Martinez and Raul Cortes Fernandez; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)