Mexico

Nubank, one of Latin America's biggest fintech companies, announced on Tuesday the launch of personal loans for the Mexican market, aiming to boost its financial services portfolio in the region's second-largest economy, Reuters reported. The new product will allow customers to obtain personal loans in less than five minutes through its platform, the digital bank's Mexican arm, known as Nu Mexico, said in a statement. The service will be available to employees on a test mode before hitting the market in the following months, it added.

Mexico’s central bank raised its growth projection for the country’s economy for this year and next, signaling that activity is surpassing policymakers’ expectations in large part due to strong trade with the U.S., Bloomberg News reported. Banxico, as the central bank is known, revised its estimate for 2023’s expansion to 3% from the prior reading of 2.3%, according to its quarterly report released Wednesday. For 2024, the bank now expects a 2.1% GDP expansion compared to the previous 1.6% estimate.

TV Azteca SAB agreed to negotiate with U.S. bondholders owed $400 million after a U.S. judge warned the second biggest broadcaster in Mexico that it could be forced to participate in a bankruptcy case in New York, Bloomberg News reported. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Lisa G. Beckerman told the company that it was obvious to her that TV Azteca had to restructure its debt, despite strong resistance from the company. TV Azteca opposes a U.S. bankruptcy and has used court rulings in Mexico to try to block bondholders from collecting on the defaulted bonds.

Mexico’s annual inflation eased roughly in line with expectations in early August, a positive sign for the central bank as it continues holding its interest rate at a record high to slow price growth, Bloomberg News reported. Consumer prices rose 4.67% in the first half of the month compared to the same period a year earlier, down from 4.78% in late July, the national statistics institute reported Thursday.

When global inflation surged in 2021, many of Latin America’s central bankers were the first to raise interest rates, moving months before the Federal Reserve began tightening. Recalling how hyperinflation topped 3,000% in some countries in the 1980s, central-bank economists from Brasília to Lima to Mexico City knew all too well the damage that soaring prices could cause. Now, Latin America is again at the forefront of the cycle, cutting rates as inflation comes back down, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The Mexican government is likely to continue supporting heavily indebted state oil firm Pemex with about $15 billion per year, Fitch ratings agency said in an a report on Wednesday, adding these will at least cover international bond debt amortizations, Reuters reported. However, should the government substantively increase its support for Pemex, this would have a negative credit effect on the sovereign, Fitch added.

Mexican payroll lender Credito Real is extending a deadline to secure a majority of investors to back a prepackaged bankruptcy filing in local courts it sees as the resolution to one of the country’s biggest corporate blow-ups, Bloomberg News reported. The non-bank lender and a group of creditors are planning to take another 30 days to recruit more bondholders in the $1.9 billion of defaulted debt to sign on to the offer originally set to expire Thursday, people familiar with the talks said, requesting anonymity since the discussions are private.

The Bank of Mexico maintained its benchmark interest rate at 11.25% on Thursday, in line with analysts' forecasts, underscoring that the inflationary outlook remains "very complex" and suggesting the rate could hold steady for a while, Reuters reported. The unanimous decision by the central bank's five-member board is the third consecutive rate hold since Banxico, as the Bank of Mexico is known, halted a two-year hiking cycle in May amid easing inflation.

Mexico saw its annual inflation rate slow for the sixth consecutive month in July to 4.79%, data from statistics agency INEGI showed on Wednesday, continuing a downward trend spurred by a long cycle of interest rate hikes, Reuters reported. Headline inflation was in line with a market forecast of 4.79%, a more than a two-year low after rising to a record 8.7% last year. The deceleration in recent months has largely been propelled by a decline in energy and food prices, Goldman Sachs analyst Alberto Ramos said.

The Mexican government is no longer planning on moving up the timeline to pay off some $4.2 billion in outstanding bonds issued to finance a partly built airport on the outskirts of Mexico City that was later canceled, a senior transport official said on Friday, Reuters reported. The canceled Texcoco project was meant to alleviate pressure at the capital's decades-old airport, but shortly after he was elected in 2018, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador ordered construction on the new facility halted, blasting it as too expensive and stained by corruption.