Mexico City - Mexican Labour Minister Javier Lozano rejected
Tuesday the 'alarmist' outlook of Mexican telecommunications
tycoon Carlos Slim, who has warned of impending economic doom for the
country.
'It frankly alarmed me to see the way that he goes about his
outlook,' the fuming minister said in an interview with Mexican
television channel Televisa.
Lozano and Slim both atteended the same 'Mexico before the crisis'
forum on Monday that was sponsored by Mexican legislators.
At the conference, Slim said the global economic and financial
crisis was headed toward causing in Mexico a collapse of GDP to
levels unknown since the 1930s, complete with the closing of many
firms and shops.
'It will be a very delicate situation. I do not want to be
alarmist, but we have to get ready to look ahead and not look at
the consequences afterwards and cry,' Slim said.
'Small, medium and large firms are going to go bankrupt, shops are
going to close, (there will be) closed premises everywhere, empty
buildings,' said Slim, 69, estimated to be the world's second-richest
man after US investor Warren Buffett.
Slim 'must clearly be conscious that his is not
just like every other statement or every other outlook, that it can
really have an impact on investment, on employment and on people's
mood,' Lozano countered.
'For him to say that we are going to have the worst unemployment
of the last 80 years, for the most powerful man we have in this
country to say that, and for him to say that he is not being
alarmist ... well, he is hiding it very well,' the minister
complained.
Lozano said comments of this type went beyond the projections of
international organizations and of Mexico's central bank and only
contribute to pushing away investment and causing unrest.
'I never heard what was going to be his own contribution' to
solving the problem, the minister complained.
'By the way, this model that he criticizes today is precisely what
has allowed him to be the second-richest man in the world,' Lozano
said.
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