Mexico to lose up to 300,000 jobs, minister says

By Estelle Shirbon

PARIS, Feb 16 (Reuters) - Mexico risks losing up to 300,000 jobs because of the economic crisis despite a government infrastructure spending programme that can employ some 750,000 people, Economy Minister Gerardo Ruiz Mateos said on Monday.

Mexico's economy is expected to shrink around 1 percent this year because of a slump in U.S. demand for manufactured exports from cars to refrigerators, while tourism and remittances from Mexicans living abroad are also being squeezed.

"The estimation we have is between 250,000 and 300,000 people," Ruiz Mateos told reporters during a visit to Paris, in answer to a question on how many Mexicans were expected to lose their jobs during the global economic slump.

Ruiz Mateos said the government was responding in two ways, with an infrastructure spending programme and with measures to support companies to dissuade them from laying off workers.

"We will do things that the government hadn't been able to do in recent years like cleaning roads, building secondary roads, renovating rural schools, and this could provide employment, more or less, for some 750,000 people," he said.

"In parallel, we have a jobs protection programme targeted at companies that will suffer a drop in demand for their exports and we think that with that programme we will save about half a million jobs that were going to be cut."

Mexican auto production and exports nosedived by more than 50 percent year-on-year in January, the latest sign of how the country is being hit by recession in its key trading partner, the United States.

Asked about this, Ruiz Mateos said that one positive sign was that none of the auto companies that had formally announced investment programmes in Mexico had dropped those plans.