AMLO cleans house: Mexican finance minister quits via Twitter

Carlos Urzua released a resignation letter citing policy decisions and ‘extremism’ as reasons for his departure.

Mexican Finance Minister Carlos Urzua/Reuters image Feb. 2019
In a resignation letter posted to his official Twitter account on Tuesday, Carlos Urzua said he felt pushed to resign from his role as Mexico's finance minister after President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador took office in December of 2018 [Henry Romero/Reuters]

Citing deep differences over economic issues, Mexico Finance Minister Carlos Urzua resigned on Tuesday in a blow to the government of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who named a well-regarded deputy minister to replace him.

“Differences on economic issues, there were many,” said political moderate Urzua in a scathing letter posted on Twitter. “Some of them happened because in this administration, public policy decisions were made without sufficient foundation.” 

The Mexican peso fell more than two percent on the news, and the benchmark index slid almost 1.5 percent.

The resignation of Mexico’s finance minister is “an unexpected and negative development,” Goldman Sachs wrote in a note to investors on Tuesday, adding that the move hinted at “significant policy and inter-personal frictions” in the government.

Lopez Obrador quickly promoted Deputy Finance Minister Arturo Herrera to the top job. Herrera is well known to investors and seen as a competent economic manager.

Investors have worried about Lopez Obrador’s policy direction since he cancelled a major airport project before taking office, and the government has clashed with businesses on a number of occasions.

Urzua cited “extremism” as a reason he felt forced to quit.

“I’m convinced that economic policies should always be evidence-based, careful of their potential impacts and free of extremism, either from the right or the left,” Urzua said. “However, these convictions did not resonate during my tenure in this administration.”

Advertisement
Source: Reuters

Advertisement