On May 18, 2013, “Mexico Grows at Slowest Pace in Three Years” was the title of a story in the Wall Street Journal. The Pact for Mexico “has already led to passage of sweeping education and telecommunications overhauls, increasing hopes that an oil-sector reform planned for the second half of the year will be equally ambitious.” Few doubt that an oil‐sector reform is coming, but many doubt that it will introduce market drivers.
In earlier reports (Market Notes 154, 165, 166 and 167) we have sought to set forth—in Houston English—what a market-oriented reform might look like; that is, a reform that would lead to increased production and investment based on competition and the expectation of market rewards in an orderly, well-regulated operating environment.
