Mexico to Sell, Close 83 Firms to Cut Spending

MEXICO CITY — Eighty-three state-owned companies, most of them money losers, are being put up for sale or closed under a plan to reduce Mexico’s huge federal budget, the Treasury Department said in a message sent to Congress.

Another 136 were sold or closed earlier this year, out of a total 1,155 that the government owned in 1982, when it launched its program to get rid of them, the message said.

Some of them were sold to state or municipal governments for token sums.

The federal government had bought the companies over four decades to keep them from closing and preserve jobs. An estimated 40% of Mexico’s working population is either unemployed or underemployed in sporadic marginal jobs.