Mexico's federal government should consider making exceptions and easing up on bureaucratic restrictions if it wants to accelerate public infrastructure investments in what remains of 2008 and during 2009, credit ratings agency Moody's analyst Alfredo Coutiño told BNamericas.
The global financial crisis has prompted the government to postpone key projects contemplated in its US$50bn/y national infrastructure plan known as PNI, such as the 50bn-peso (US$3.72bn) Punta Colonet multimodal project in Baja California state.
This, in turn, has motivated construction companies and associations to urge the government to speed up the PNI in terms of projects, funding and contract awarding, to keep the slowdown currently affecting the infrastructure sector from becoming more serious.
"Now is the time for the federal government to increase expenditure on public infrastructure projects. There is an important lag and the end of the year is only two months away," Coutiño said.
"The government should ease up on the rules to give more companies - especially medium and small firms - access to public funds and infrastructure projects, even if it is just temporarily," he added.
Coutiño said authorities should also make regulations governing public tenders more flexible so more companies can bid and the federal budget can be spent, thus boosting activity in the infrastructure sector and the overall economy.
"On the other hand, the finance ministry must effectively allocate funding to other ministries in charge of spending public funds, such as [transport and communications ministry] SCT," the analyst said.
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