Obrador Hoping To End Presidential Term Without Peso Depreciation

Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador will see his term end in 2024. And one of the things that the 69-year-old leader wants to see is stepping down with the Mexican peso still strong.

Obrador expects to end his mandate with a depreciation of the Mexican peso, aware that a strong peso would be good for the country’s economy. He expected the peso to trade around 20.20 or 20.30 to the U.S. dollar by the end of his term, Reuters reported.

This comes not long after the Mexican peso hit an over 2 ½ year high on Thursday, trading up to 0.8% at 19.41 per dollar.

"I very much question the fact that everywhere the formula to lower inflation is to increase (interest) rates, but this is inconvenient for the economy because credit becomes more expensive," President Obrador stated.

"Growth should not be halted, the important thing is to grow without inflation," he added.

This also came not long after the Bank of Mexico was scheduled to meet and anticipated to hike key interest rates by 75 basis points to a record 10% with hopes of taming surging inflation.

“Few interest rate increases remain, and even though there continues to be a restrictive monetary policy [in the U.S. for now], the light at the end of the tunnel is now visible,” Gabriela Siller, director of economic analysis at Banco Base said.

However, Obrador has other things that need addressing. This includes how he has to deal with human rights issues.

The 69-year-old leader continues to battle negative media coverage about his administration’s track record on human rights with Mexico ranked as the most dangerous country in the world for journalists, Forbes reported.

A reason seen behind this is that Mexico has never been known to investigate the killings of journalists and environmental activists. However, Obrador hopes to rectify this, starting with the investigation of the 43 students in 2014, an event that occurred during the presidency of his predecessor, Enrique Peña Nieto.