Mexico's problems are similar to Greece's: CCE

Mexico has problems similar to those that plunged Greece into a crisis, such as the public sector deficit that surpasses 150% if labor and pension liabilities are taken into account, in addition to the bloated debt of some municipalities and states, Gerardo Gutiérrez Candiani, president of the Business Coordinating Council (CCE), said.

"There is opacity and manipulation of the information on public finances in some states, as we recently witnessed in Coahuila," he added.

The debt of the states exceeds 510 billion pesos (US$32.4 billion), and has had an exponential growth in recent decades.

In the case of federal finances "due to the dynamism of public spending -higher than the corrected budget that included 124 billion pesos in cuts announced earlier this year- along with the drop in oil income, the public sector deficit reached 180.69 billion pesos (US$11.5 billion) from January to May, 2.2 times higher than the deficit registered in the same period last year, and the highest for the period," Gutiérrez explained.

Therefore the "similarities with the problems that plunged Greece into a crisis are evident," he added.

Although there is no systemic problem, having a ratio of just over 3% of the debt of the states compared to the national GDP shows that "hot spots do exist individually, with states that owe more than their income," the CCE said in is weekly message.

In Greece the "resources from grants and loans from the European Union, equivalent to the high oil surpluses that Mexico had for over a decade, were squandered and were not used for productive investment," the CCE added.