In less than a decade, Mexico will become a developed country with average incomes at nearly double today’s level, Carlos Slim, the world’s richest man, told Emerging Markets in an interview yesterday.
“By 2015, our country should have a per capita income level that breaks the barrier of underdevelopment and surpasses $12,000 per capita,” the telecommunications magnate said. Mexican per capita income now stands at about $9,000 on average, but income inequality is among the most world’s greatest.
Achieving this bright future will require some hard work, according to Slim’s vision. “Mexico in the coming years must become actively immersed in the civilization of technology and services,” and launch major initiatives in health and quality basic and university education, Slim said.
Most observers of Mexico are convinced the country needs a serious educational revamping that would modernize the curriculum, create skills needed in the global economy and reform relations with the powerful, corporatist teacher’s union to enforce quality standards in instruction.
Another goal for Mexico is to “achieve robust sustained growth of more than 5% real growth per year and expansion of employment,” said Slim – who this year overtook computer magnate Bill Gates to become the world’s wealthiest man, when the value of his burgeoning cellular telephone company, America Movil, surged, bringing his fortune to $67 billion.
Slim’s belief in sustained strong growth, which has eluded Mexico since the debt crisis and economic recession of the 1980s, is based on the historical experience of the so-called “Mexican miracle.” Slim cited the period from the 1930s to 1982 to defend his vision: these were “fifty years of sustained growth [averaging annually] 6.2%, when [Mexico] made the transition from an agricultural, rural society to an industrial and urban society.”
One of Slim’s new enterprises, IDEAL (full name, Promoter of Development and Employment in Latin America), is designed specifically to make a contribution to growth and employment not only in Mexico but across the region.
IDEAL, founded in 2004, will “invest and build physical infrastructure and housing, encouraging diverse groups of investors to do so to reduce the lack of investment in our countries that is the result of lack of capital,” Slim said.
Slim sees infrastructure projects as a good way to generate jobs in a region where unemployment is high, and the informal economy accounts for up to 50% of output in some countries.
Asked what he considers his particular contributions as a business leader from an emerging market, Slim said: “I think all entrepreneurs are alike: they make expanding investments, create wealth, promote economic activity and generate jobs and tax contributions.”