Colegio de Contadores considera que la medida es meramente recaudatoria e ilegal; benéfico que Prodecon fije su postura, opina

El Servicio de Administración Tributaria (SAT) está pidiendo el pago retroactivo de derechos a maquiladoras para renovar su autorización en el Esquema Integral de Certificación de Empresas en comercio exterior que les permite la devolución del IVA en menos de 20 días y la inscripción inmediata en el padrón de importadores y exportadores.

La Administración General de Auditoría de Comercio Exterior, a través de las Administración Central de Certificación y Asuntos Internacionales de Auditoría de Comercio Exterior, dio a conocer las cuotas de los últimos seis años.

Antes, las empresas que están en el programa Industria Maquiladora y Manufacturera de Exportación (IMMEX) no pagaban derechos por renovar su certificación y ahora el SAT quiere cobrarles de manera retroactiva.

Las nuevas cuotas van desde los 24 mil 506 pesos correspondiente a 2015 hasta 29 mil 747 pesos para 2020, para las certificaciones en IVA, del Impuesto Especial Sobre Producción y Servicios (IEPS), para la comercializadora e importadora, los operadores económicos autorizados y el socio comercial certificado.

De no pagar, las empresas perderán su registro y beneficios de certificación que lograron para no ser afectadas con la reforma fiscal de 2014.

Para el integrante de la Comisión Técnica de Comercio Exterior del Colegio de Contadores Públicos de México, Juan Antonio Castro Chávez, esta medida es sólo recaudatoria e ilegal.

“Es una lectura desatinada que está haciendo la autoridad porque no tiene sustento en la ley”, afirmó.

En entrevista con EL UNIVERSAL, consideró que es un caso que amerita la intervención del ombudsman fiscal.

“Sería deseable que en estos casos se llegue a incorporar a la Prodecon como un organismo que analizara el tema de manera masiva”, estimó.

Refirió que el cobro de derechos se manejaba desde 2011 con algunas firmas, por la inscripción al registro de empresas certificadas.

Con el tiempo se incorporaron modalidades nuevas, la más común fue la certificación del IVA y el IEPS de manera forzosa a las Inmmex o maquiladoras.

Pero ahora se quiere cobrar derechos a las maquiladoras de manera retroactiva, lo que no tiene sustento, señaló.

Pagar y continuar con la autorización será la opción más razonable, porque de lo contrario, cuando las empresas intenten renovar la autorización, el SAT va a cuestionar que no le han pagado derechos, consideró.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico is facing its deepest recession in decades and prominent investors believe it could soon follow state oil company Pemex in seeing its credit rating relegated to “junk” territory as the COVID-19 pandemic rages on.

Losing the investment-grade rating that Latin America’s second-largest economy has held for almost two decades would be a bitter blow for leftist President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

His fiscally conservative approach to finance and debt is guided by memories of Mexico’s humiliating payments crises and bailouts in the 1980s and 1990s.

“Losing the investment grade rating is a real risk and now something investors increasingly think about,” said Luis Gonzali, a portfolio manager at asset manager Franklin Templeton.

“It could be the event that defines the presidency of Lopez Obrador and leads to investors fleeing Mexico fast, and at a large scale.”

Analysts at JP Morgan said Mexico’s big presence in major investment grade bond indices would exacerbate the scale of forced selling if it becomes a “fallen angel,” a company or country whose ratings have been cut to below investment-grade.

All three ratings agencies have already downgraded Mexico this year.

Fitch Ratings has its sovereign bonds at BBB-, with a stable outlook; Moody’s Investors Services has them at Baa1 and S&P Global Ratings at BBB, both with negative outlooks, signaling further downgrades.

Two would have to rate Mexico speculative grade, or junk, for it to become official.

JP Morgan analysts wrote in a research note that an estimated $44.3 billion of Mexican bonds are at risk of forced selling in the event of a cut to junk.

About $4.5 billion of that total is corporate debt, they said, noting that a sovereign downgrade makes it harder for companies to hold an investment grade rating.

Gonzali estimated the junk label could initially push up borrowing costs for the Mexican government by as much as 300 basis points before settling at around 100 basis points higher than now.

FRUGAL WAYS

Mexico was long a darling of investors as it reduced the role of the state and appointed U.S-trained technocrats attuned to Wall Street’s preferences to reduce the state’s role in the economy.

But its star was fading even before Lopez Obrador’s 2018 election win.

Despite his frugal ways since taking office, policy decisions including cancellations of billions of dollars of infrastructure projects and the renegotiation of energy contracts have further eroded trust.

Concerns are also growing within the finance ministry, where one official said further downgrades were likely with a cut to junk possible as early as next year.

“The outlook for Mexico’s sovereign debt is very negative,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “The problem is that there’s now a confidence crisis in the politics of the government.”

JP Morgan’s analysts agreed that a downgrade to speculative grade could happen late next year or in early 2022.

They cited low growth and the state’s crowding out of investors in the energy sector among factors undermining Mexico’s coveted investment grade. They also cited slow progress in diversifying the tax base, and a weak response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Investors already rate Mexican sovereign bonds similar to junk, with spreads to U.S. Treasuries climbing.

The spread has moved “into the pricing range of a security on the cusp of downgrade to high yield,” said Andrew Stanners, an investment director at asset manager Aberdeen Standard.

Carlos Serrano, an economist at BBVA, the country’s largest bank, noted the market priced Mexico’s last sovereign bond issue at a level similar to that of junk-rated Paraguay.

Mexico issued $2.5 billion in April at a yield to maturity of 5%, Serrano said, while Paraguay issued $2 billion the same month, and with a similar maturity, at a yield to maturity of 4.95%.

Not all feel a downgrade to junk is inevitable, however.

“The decision not to be fiscally expansive could pay off if we get a very quick recovery,” said Stanners, referring to the lack of government spending to offset the pandemic’s economic impact.

“It’ll mean that the fiscal position has not been eroded as harshly as other countries and could prevent rating downgrades to high yield.”

The director of the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) has vowed to put an end to “simulation and fraud” committed by renewable energy firms at the expense of the state-owned company.

In an interview with the newspaper La Jornada, Manuel Bartlett said the CFE has filed complaints against renewable energy firms with the Energy Regulatory Commission (CRE), an ostensibly autonomous federal body.

He said that renewable firms have an unfair advantage because they don’t pay the CFE for using its transmission lines to transport the energy they generate nor do they pay the state-owned company for the backup power they use.

Not paying for transmission or backup power allows the private firms to save billions of pesos, Bartlett said.

The CFE chief also charged that renewable firms have acted fraudulently by passing off other private companies as their business partners rather than their customers.

Bartlett said that large companies like corporate conglomerate Grupo Salinas, convenience store chain OXXO, big-box store Walmart, cinema chain Cinépolis, manufacturer Kimberly Clark and others pay very low electricity rates because they are passed off as partners of firms such as Iberdrola, Enel Energía and American Light and Power.

Their “simulated” partnerships allow the client firms to receive electricity without paying for transmission costs, he said.

Bartlett told La Jornada that he hopes that the CRE resolves the issues soon and corrects “illegal, irrational and unfair” decisions it took in favor of private firms during the six-year term of the government led by former president Enrique Peña Nieto.

The decisions taken by the CRE during the term of the previous government allowed private, mainly foreign companies to make huge profits at the expense of the CFE, he said.

Bartlett asserted that the federal government is “not against clean energy” and that “what’s established by the [2014] energy reform will be respected” but stressed that “what we’re not going to allow is for this large social vocation company, the CFE, to continue to be used to bolster private companies.”

“That would … go against the national interest,” he said.

“The large companies of Mexico, those with the most capital, are cheating in order to pay a lot less for the electricity their businesses consume while at the CFE we’re struggling, counting every centavo so that the impoverished people of Mexico pay as little as possible,” Bartlett said.

“It’s not a [fair] electricity market, it’s theft, heaven on earth for the [renewable energy] investors that have illegally seized [the business of] large consumers,” he said.

Bartlett accused Peña Nieto of attempting to kill off the CFE and leave the energy market in the hands of private foreign companies.

Both President López Obrador and the CFE chief, an 84-year-old former federal cabinet minister and ex-governor of Puebla, say they are committed to “rescuing” the state-owned firm while keeping power costs down.

Bartlett charged that private companies were allowed to establish wind and solar projects “wherever they wanted” and without proper planning. As a result, their energy generation capacity is frequently interrupted, he said.

“Every time that a cloud goes by or the wind doesn’t blow, they don’t generate energy,” Bartlett said, explaining that at such times renewable companies tap into CFE-generated base load power to maintain supply.

“It’s called backup and they don’t pay for it either. That’s why the energy they generate is cheaper; it proves the falseness of [the claim] they’ve disseminated: that our power is more expensive and that our infrastructure is obsolete,” he said.

“Now that we want to put an end to this plunder and fraud … they’re accusing us of being inefficient and of wanting to put an end to clean energy. … Whoever comes to do business here has to pay for transmission costs, distribution costs and backup. We have no reason to continue subsidizing them,” Bartlett said.

He made similar remarks in an interview with the news agency Reuters on Friday, asking: “Do you think it’s fair for the CFE to subsidize these companies that don’t produce power all day?”

In response, the Confederation of Industrial Chambers (Concamin) denied that private energy companies are getting a free ride.

“The private companies that operate in the electricity market do pay the CFE to use the transmission lines to transport the energy they produce to their clients. The payment is made monthly according to the regulated rate set by the Energy Regulatory Commission,” Concamin said in a statement.

“Therefore, Bartlett is lying when he suggests that private companies are not paying to use the CFE transmission lines,” the business group said.

With regard to his subsidy claim, Concamin asserted that “renewable energy is not subsidized in Mexico.”

“Mr. Bartlett should know” that plants that produce base load power receive an additional payment that “recognizes their capacity to produce all day” whereas renewable energy plants are only paid for the power they generate, the business group said.

Concamin also highlighted that it’s not just renewable energy companies that generate power intermittently, pointing out that the CFE has hydroelectric plants that depend on rain as much as wind and solar-powered plants depend on gust, gales and sunshine.

“Will Mr. Bartlett apply the backup payment to his intermittent hydroelectric plants? We don’t think so,” it said.

Will privately owned-plants that produce base load power be allowed to collect the backup power payment? asked Concamin before again responding “We don’t think so.”

Tensions between the federal government and the renewable energy sector have intensified this month after the National Energy Control Center published an agreement in late April that suspended national grid trials for new clean energy projects.

The federal Energy Ministry subsequently published a new energy policy in mid-May that imposes restrictive measures for the renewable energy sector that could effectively prevent its expansion in Mexico and consolidate control of electrical power in the CFE.

The government also has its eyes on renegotiating contracts with three companies that operate wind farms in Oaxaca, according to a report by the newspaper El Universal.

Anonymous energy sector sources told El Universal that the government wants to set new conditions for the purchase of energy by the CFE from the Oaxaca wind projects operated by Spain’s Iberdrola, Acciona and Grupo Cobra.

The companies signed contracts with the government for 20 years in 2010, meaning that they are only at the halfway point of their lifespan. In those 10 years, the CFE has paid the companies just over 19.7 billion pesos (US $872.5 million at today’s exchange rate).

Asked about its knowledge of the plan to modify the contracts, the Mexican Association of Wind Energy (AMDEE) acknowledged that “it’s something that could happen.”

However, the association said that if the CFE were to breach its obligations under the contracts, the companies could sue the government for lost income.

The government cannot unilaterally modify or terminate contracts, the AMDEE said, charging that the Finance Ministry might have to involve itself in the matter in order for a resolution to be reached.

The association noted that federal authorities have said that will not seek to alter previously-signed contracts but added that they have not always kept their word.

The CFE last year filed requests for arbitration in international courts as part of efforts to annul clauses in seven gas pipeline contracts before reaching an agreement with three private companies that López Obrador said would save Mexico US $4.5 billion.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico will begin opening some automotive factories from May 18 under a plan unveiled on Wednesday that loosens coronavirus restrictions and paves the way for U.S. car giants to ramp up output dependent on parts made south of the border.

In a presentation, the government said as of Monday, mining, construction and manufacturing of transport equipment will be considered essential activities and that companies must implement strict protocols to protect their workers.

“We now have the light which tells us we’re going to get out of the tunnel,” President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said alongside top officials at a news conference in which the government set out its plans.

Lopez Obrador stressed that adoption of the measures would be voluntary. Some states may move faster than others during the reboot of the auto sector, though industry leaders are eager for supply chains to reconnect as seamlessly as possible.

A government memo dated Wednesday, based on media reports, showed that state governments diverged considerably in their guidance on how quickly they would restart activities.

The United States and auto companies have pressed Mexico to reopen factories serving the U.S. market, despite the intensifying challenge posed by the pandemic. Mexico on Tuesday registered 353 coronavirus deaths, its most lethal day yet.

Mexico sends 80% of its exports to the United States and became its biggest trade partner last year, with bilateral commerce worth over $600 billion. Mexican auto output all but evaporated in April, plunging by 99%.

From Monday, Mexico will also allow municipalities without reported coronavirus cases which lie adjacent to others with no infections to begin lifting coronavirus curbs.

The government said some 269 municipalities, or more than 10% of the national total, currently fall into that category.

Other more general economic and social activities will restart step by step under a “traffic light” system to determine which areas of the country are at lower risk of outbreaks of infection, Economy Minister Graciela Marquez said.

The reopening of North America’s automotive industry is likely to be gradual, said Phil Annese, a senior director at Pilot Freight Services, which moves car parts for Ford (F.N), GM (GM.N) and FCA (FCHA.MI) from Mexico to U.S. factories.

The assembly plants “are going to start out at a 25% to 40% production rate, they’re going to go as slow as they can to not create snags in the supply chain,” Annese said.

“If they get that supply chain stuck, that’s more trouble than anything they can have. Starting and stopping lines, that’s where the cost comes in,” he added.

Mexico has been studying other countries emerging from lockdowns and believes highly mechanized factories offer better conditions to control the risk of contagion, officials say.

Lopez Obrador is trying to strike a balance between limiting economic damage and saving lives, but some lawmakers worry Mexico may be moving too fast.

They include Benjamin Carrera, a state-level lawmaker from Lopez Obrador’s ruling MORENA party in Chihuahua, home to the northern industrial hub of Ciudad Juarez.

He has urged authorities not to allow manufacturers to open before June 1 in Ciudad Juarez, a border city where many maquiladoras, including auto parts makers, are located and 146 people have died of the coronavirus, including factory workers.

“Juarez couldn’t survive without the factories. But right now, the life of a worker is much more important than a job,” he said. “A job can be recovered. People’s lives can no longer be.”

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico’s central bank is likely to cut interest rates further, with some members of its governing board backing deeper reductions in borrowing costs to shield the economy from the shock of the coronavirus pandemic, minutes from its latest policy meeting showed on Tuesday.

All five members of the Bank of Mexico’s board voted unanimously to lower the overnight interbank interest rate by 50 basis points to 6% at an April 21 out-of-cycle meeting, and the central bank unveiled some $31 billion in support for the financial system to help the economy weather the coronavirus pandemic.

One board member argued the most prudent course was to substantially lower the policy rate, so the real interest rate is below its neutral level as soon as possible, including the possibility of moving towards a real rate close to zero or even in negative territory, according to the minutes.

“Despite the unanimous decision, the minutes reflect that views among board members are not homogeneous. While most members embrace prudence in the easing process amid risks of fiscal deterioration and credit rating downgrades, there are views in favor of getting faster into an expansionary stance of monetary policy,” Morgan Stanley said in a research report.

Morgan Stanley expects another 50-basis-point cut at the upcoming May 14 policy meeting, while Goldman Sachs economist Alberto Ramos said in a separate report he expects the central bank to drive the policy rate down to 4.50% by the end of 2020.

Mexico’s economy is facing an unprecedented shock in the coronavirus pandemic, and “idiosyncratic” factors, such as the recent credit ratings downgrades of the sovereign and state oil firm Pemex, are making matters worse, according to the minutes.

Most of the Bank of Mexico’s board members “warned that the adverse environment the domestic economy is facing resulting from the pandemic and the lower oil prices is worsened by idiosyncratic factors,” according to the minutes.

“In this context, most members highlighted the recent downgrade of the sovereign and Pemex’s credit rating by three agencies,” the minutes added.

All of the board members said Mexican economic activity is forecast to contract “significantly” during the first half of the year, and underscored that the magnitude and duration of the pandemic’s effects are still unknown.

The economic shock from the pandemic is already clearly visible in the Mexican economy and forecast declines in global economic activity are of a magnitude not seen since the Great Depression, according to the minutes.

Most of the bank’s board members said the impact is evident in consumer and business confidence, credit card spending, manufacturing orders, purchasing managers’ indexes, car sales, air and land transportation and hotel occupancy and tourism flows.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s economic activity dropped 1.6% in the first quarter compared to the final three months of 2019, plunging the country deeper into a recession that predated the coronavirus pandemic, according to a report released Thursday by the government statistical agency.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexican business leaders fed up with President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador are beginning to marshal support for political outsiders to weaken him at the ballot box next year, in an unfolding strategy that may also fuel greater division.

Lopez Obrador has alarmed investors with idiosyncratic policymaking since taking office. Now, his reluctance to help companies through the coronavirus pandemic with relief measures has pushed even business allies to vent their frustration.

Carlos Salazar, head of the Business Coordinating Council (CCE) and a key interlocutor between the president and big business, last week suggested using a 2022 referendum planned by Lopez Obrador on his presidency to vote him out.

Since then, business has become more open about using the ballot box to change the direction of the country.

Lopez Obrador’s National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) and its allies control both houses of Congress. But critics hope they can end that when a new lower house is elected in June 2021.

Jose Arturo Sanchez, head of the CCE in the central city of Leon, said that because opposition parties are widely discredited, business groups were looking to candidates without political baggage.

“We at least need to pick good candidates of the citizen kind who aren’t so tarnished,” Sanchez said.

Talks over non-aligned candidates are underway between the opposition and civil society organizations including business groups, academics, environmentalists and human rights advocates, said Fernando Belaunzaran, co-leader of the opposition center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).

Lopez Obrador has clashed with a number of prominent civil society groups since taking office in December 2018.

To maximize its chance of success in 2021, the opposition is mulling electoral alliances and avoiding fielding competing candidates, said Belaunzaran.

“But it’s still early days,” he said.

To focus too much on the 2021 ballot now, Belaunzaran said, risked playing to Lopez Obrador’s strategy of confrontation and increasing division during the economic crisis.

“That strengthens more extreme positions,” he said. “A good opposition bloc needs to be built moving toward the center.”

As president, Lopez Obrador has repeatedly warned that “neoliberal” and “conservative” business and political adversaries devoted to the “corrupt” economic model of his predecessors are bent on thwarting him.

That narrative plays well with his base who, like Lopez Obrador, say corporate opponents schemed with his political foes to rob him of the 2006 presidential election.

The resistance he prophesied is increasingly becoming reality just as companies seek help to weather the coronavirus.

“It’s like a chronicle of a failure foretold,” said Sanchez in Leon. “More than that. It’s worse than we thought it would be.”

Lopez Obrador said this week that “fronts are forming against me and there’s a whole campaign of slander, dirty war, complete lies,” and likened criticism of his government to that faced by President Francisco Madero, a hero of the Mexican Revolution who was betrayed and murdered in a U.S.-backed coup.

The conflict risks aggravating a recession that began in 2019 when investment fell sharply amid uncertainty over Lopez Obrador’s management of the economy, which analysts say could shrink by up to 10% this year.

COMPROMISE

With sales plummeting during the shutdown, executives are furious that instead of giving them more time to pay their tax bills, Lopez Obrador has accused companies of exploiting the crisis to fire workers, and said there will be no bailouts for the rich.

In response, some are threatening to not pay taxes until the economy recovers from the coronavirus, particularly in northern border states such as Chihuahua and Tamaulipas.

Lopez Obrador has alarmed investors by questioning previously signed deals, holding referendums against investment projects he opposes, and threatening to tear up billions of dollars in infrastructure contracts.

Businesses are now wary of risking capital, “apart from the big companies that have a relationship with the government,” said Sanchez in Leon, reflecting concern that under Lopez Obrador, smaller firms lack a voice.

“It’s made us consider politics, and to look for and support people best suited to getting the country out of the big problem it’s in,” said Francisco Santini, head of the CCE in Chihuahua.

The bad blood has prompted calls from elder statesmen for compromise.

“There needs to be an agreement between the government, the business sector and organized labor over a new social consensus,” said David Ibarra, a former finance minister.

There are some signs the government is listening.

On Thursday, Lopez Obrador announced he would provide one million additional loans to small businesses.

Later that day, Luis Nino de Rivera, head of the private banking association, said his group was working with authorities to help smaller firms with state funds and federal guarantees.

But Santini in Chihuahua said he did not believe the president would change.

“Today, we can see we’ve got nowhere,” he said. “Quite the opposite: his ideology has just become stronger.”

MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s Treasury predicted Thursday that the country’s economy will contract by as much as 3.9% in 2020 the face of the spreading COVID-19 pandemic, but private analysts are making even more dire predictions: the country’s worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

That was underscored Thursday when Mexico’s Tourism Department said it was working with hotel companies to ensure the “gradual closing” of hotels in the country.

The Bank of America predicted Thursday that Mexico’s GDP could contract by 8%. That would be a bigger downturn than the 2009 global recession — complicated in Mexico by a swine flu outbreak — when GDP contracted by 6.5%. It would also be worse than the December 1994 peso crisis, following which the country’s GDP contracted by 6.2% in 1995.

Bank of America analyst Carlos Capistran said: “You would have to go back to the Great Depression or the war to find numbers like this.”

The bank said Mexico will face the twin shocks of a predicted 6% economic contraction in the United States, its largest trading partner, and oil prices that have fallen to about $10.60 per barrel for Mexican export crude.

The U.S. downturn “impacts Mexico negatively mostly through trade but also through lower remittances,” the money that Mexican migrants send home, according to the report.

Mexican migrants sent home a record $36 billion in remittances in 2019, making it a larger source of revenue than tourism or oil exports.

But the report also noted that the recovery could be strong after the pandemic eases, with a strong upturn possibly starting in the fourth quarter of 2020.

“We see a recovery to 4.5% GDP growth in 2021 in part due to a large US recovery but also as the depreciation of the peso is likely to help economic activity after the initial shock is over,” according to the bank’s report.

Mexico’s Treasury Department said even the best-case scenario for 2020 would be no growth.

Mexico was already in a technical recession. “In a very short period the global economic panorama has deteriorated rapidly and significantly,” the treasury said in its forecast to Mexico’s lower legislative chamber Wednesday.

It said the high level of macroeconomic uncertainty provoked by the pandemic makes it difficult to predict economic growth.

Gabriela Siller, an analyst with Banco Base, said Thursday that the Treasury forecast appeared to be optimistic. She noted that the latest survey published by Mexico’s central bank anticipated an average contraction of 3.99%

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador plans to lay out the government’s economic recovery plan Sunday.