MEXICO CITY-Mexico's plastics processors still are assessing the likely effects on the industry of the shock devaluation of the peso. But for most, high hopes of real growth in 1995 have been dashed. In an early reaction to the crisis and to the new government's emergency economic stabilization plan, Rafael Vidales Mendez, president of the national plastics processors association Anipac in Mexico City, said it is impossible for his members to freeze their prices, considering the huge rise in prices of imported resin and machinery.
He said his latest invoice for a resin shipment from the United States received by his own firm, Polibolsas Mexicanas SA de CV, was double the cost of the previous shipment. Freight and duty costs for a new mold from Italy were also up twofold, he said.
Polibolsas Mexicanas, based in Atizapan, north of Mexico City, is an extruder and converter of printed polyethylene bags.
Companies are trapped between soaring import costs and likely increases in already high local interest rates.
Vidales expects that company expansion plans will be suspended for five months to a year. But the devaluation will help some hard-pressed processors to compete at home by raising import prices, and it also will encourage exports from Mexico, he said.
