Mexico's Economic Dilemma by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Unlimited Model
Published: 2011-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

The Disguised Maquila Sector and Beyond

This chapter focuses on the “parallel” maquila firms—those firms that have operated as high exporters yet have not been registered under the maquila regime. We begin by briefly summarizing some of the important general characteristics of these firms. We then focus the remainder of the chapter on a regional case study of the auto sector. This allows us to expand upon some of the crucial issues at stake regarding the continuation of current economic policies. An examination of these parallel maquila firms demonstates once again that the export-at-all-cost approach, as tied to a largely unregulated production process driven by and for transnational capital—overwhelmingly from the United States—has resulted in the marginalization of Mexico’s dwindling industrial base. Unable, except in the rarest of instances, to participate in this production process, Mexico’s endogenous technological capabilities have atrophied.

General Characteristics of the Disguised Maquila Sector

From 1985 onward, various governmental programs allowed foreign-owned transplant firms (and Mexican-owned companies) the option of both selling in the domestic market and the tariff exemptions and other privileges received by the maquila firms on imported components and parts—as well as machinery and equipment—when their production was exported. To exist in this category, a minimal level of exports had to be achieved and maintained. Such firms were then part of the PITEX program—the Program for the Temporary Importation of Export Items (de Maria y Campos et al. 2009, 37–41). The PITEX program began as part of the broad umbrella initiative known as PRONAFICE 1984–1988 (the National Program to Develop Industry and Foreign Trade), discussed in chapter 2. Intended to target ten key sectors—including the auto sector, where it had its greatest success—PRONAFICE was the last effort by the developmental nationalists to reinvigorate import-substitution policies during the 1982–1987 period (as discussed in chapter 2). PITEX firms were variously officially defined as corporations undertaking “indirect exports” and firms engaged in “sub-maquila operations.” In 2002 they were required to export at least $500,000 US per year, or 10 percent of their production.

We have termed these high-export non-maquila plants the “disguised maquilas.” These high-export firms operate with a significant portion of their production essentially devoted to processing imported inputs for re-export. Yet these activities, broadly similar in many respects to those undertaken by the maquila firms, were not—until late 2006—officially recognized in the discussion of the export-led model. That is, there is a vast literature dissecting almost every possible aspect of the maquila industry and a near paucity of analyses focusing on the more than three thousand firms operating in the disguised maquila sector. Over time the differences between the two diminished to the point that officially, in 2007, the two were merged under the Program for Maquiladora, Manufacturing and Export Services, or IMMEX. This program formally allowed the former PITEX firms the benefits that the maquila firms have received.1 In short, there now are no differences of note between maquila firms and the disguised maquila firms in terms of customs duties, import-export laws, and internal taxes.

Figure 5.1

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