| MEXICO CITY -- (AP) -- Congressmen from
Mexico's three major political parties demanded an
investigation into potential wrongdoing by Mexico's sugar
consortiums after the government took over nearly half the
country's financially troubled mills. ``We agree with the
expropriation but we demand a full investigation to know first
how the mills were sold and why the owners didn't capitalize
them after receiving public funds,'' Democratic Revolution
Party congressman Arturo Herviz said in the newspaper Reforma
Tuesday.
The Agriculture and Treasury secretaries announced Monday
they would spend up to 3 billion pesos ($300 million) to shore
up the seized mills, which represent 27 of the country's 59
sugar plants.
Poor management practices saddled the companies with about
25 billion pesos ($2.5 billion) in debt and left thousands of
sugar cane producers unpaid.
The mill owners -- who received generous government
subsidies after the mills were privatized in the early 1990s
-- apparently won't be paid for their properties, since most
owe the government money.
The expropriation reminded many Mexicans of the
privatization of the nation's banks in the 1990s: The new
owners mismanaged the banks, and the government was later
forced to take most of them over again and assume nearly $100
billion in bad debts.
Officials said the sugar mills could be reprivatized in
about a year and a half -- the same thing that was done with
the banks.
Finance Secretary Francisco Gil Diaz said the seizure was
aimed at stemming the flow of government resources into the
industry, resources that he said were being ``milked by the
owners for their personal interest.''
Still, some officials questioned the wisdom.
``The country is no longer one that socializes losses and
privatizes gains,'' Jorge Chavez Presa, secretary of the House
treasury commission and a member of the former ruling
Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, told Reforma.
``The slate should not be wiped clean'' for the sugar
owners as it was for the banks, Herviz said. |