“Lanka could follow Mexican path to recover from economic mess”

Lanka has the potential to boost trade and tourism with Mexico

By Zanita Careem

Mexican Ambassador Federico Salas Lotfe handed his credentials to President Ranil wickremasinghe on Friday (Nov 11) at the Presidential Secretariat. Ambassador Salas, at a media conference held at Kingsbury hotel the day before he handed over his credentials, said that he was happy to be in Sri Lanka and would strive to strengthen the ties between the two countries. He said that diplomatic relations between the two countries dated back to the 1960’s.

Ambassador Salas is a career diplomat who rose to the ranks of Ambassador in 2000. He was Mexico’s Ambassador to the Czech Republic from 2001 to 2007, Israel from 2007 to 2015 and Indonesia 2015 to 2017 after which he was appointed as Mexico’s permanent Representative to the United Nations Organization for Education, Science and Culture (UNESCO) from 2017 to 2019. He has been Mexico’s Ambassador to India, concurrent to Bangladesh, Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka since 2019.

The Mexican Ambassador said that Sri Lanka has the potential to boost trade and tourism with Mexico. He said that exports from Sri Lanka out weighed imports from Mexico by a big margin. Sri Lanka exported tea, cinnamon and other spices to Mexico.

Speaking about Mexico, he said that his country is fast becoming a top tourist destination in the world

As it had a unique culture and boasted of over two dozen world heritage sites that dated back from the time of the Aztec and Mayan civilizations. He said that Mexican Cuisine varied greatly from region to region.

Mexican writers and artists have received worldwide acclaim for their creativity and originality and both nations can benefit form cultural exchanges between the two countries. He said that student exchanges was another way to improve the bond between the countries.

Sri Lanka is currently following the same successful path that Mexico followed to overcome their economic recession (Tequila crisis) in 1995, said Ambassador Salas.

He said Mexico’s economy experienced a severe recession as a result of the peso’s devaluation and the flight to safer investments from 1994. The country’s GDP declined by 6.2% throughout 1995. Mexico’s banks collapsed and the country faced severe inflation and extreme poverty skyrocketed as real wages plummeted. Unemployment nearly doubled and over one million people lost their jobs. Prices increased by 35%.

He said that one of the first things they did was ask people to tighten their belts and cut down public expenditure similar to what Sri Lanka is doing today. An ambitious programme was also launched to sell off Mexico’s largest public enterprises “Morocco also sought IMF assistance for a bail package towards setting their long-standing intention and also contacted donor countries like America to obtain fresh credit.”