The president reiterated that he made a mistake in reporting on the issue in his morning conference on Thursday and that he thought the announcement about raising the reference rate from 6% to 6.5% had already been publicly disclosed before his comments.
“The Secretary of the Treasury participates in the meeting of the Bank of Mexico, so he informed me that the decision had been made unanimously to increase the interest rate,” López Obrador said on Friday, admitting that Banxico’s law was violated by leaked that information.
In accordance with the Law of the Mexican central bank “those who attend the sessions must maintain confidentiality regarding the matters discussed in them, unless expressly authorized by the Governing Board to make any communication”, reads Article 45, content in Chapter IV of Government and Surveillance.
During the morning conference this Thursday, President López Obrador said that the Bank of Mexico raised its interest rate to 6.5%, an announcement that the institution should have made known until 1:00 p.m. yesterday.
Only the Secretary of the Treasury, Rogelio Ramírez de la O, attends the monetary policy meetings; the Undersecretary of Finance, Gabriel Yorio; the secretary of the Governing Board, Elías Villanueva Ochoa; the governor of Banxico, Victoria Rodríguez; and deputy governors Galia Borja, Irene Espinosa, Gerardo Esquivel and Jonathan Heath.
With information from Reuters.
