Arguelles: It all depends on the type of government that you have and on the type of private sector you have – on the productive side or on the industrial side, but also on the financial side. I would suggest to all our friends who might be thinking of the Mexican experience, that if we had done this five years ago, it probably would not have worked. It worked in 1986 because in that year the conditions in Mexico were, I think, very favourable for a project like this. I also have to say that 15 years later we are reviewing this model, because now we have a very open economy, an economy which is part of the global environment, we have a lot of free trade agreements, we are completely in partnership with the US and Canada, and we are finding that our private banks – both Mexican and foreign banks – are being efficient, they have funds and they are willing to enter the private sector again.

Arguelles: Definitely. I would say that is part of what a development bank or a government institution should do. Sometimes a government has to intervene in the economy to give an example or to lead on a specific strategy, and once it has achieved that goal it should retire. We have been thinking of various scenarios, and probably within the next 15 to 20 years perhaps Bancomext as an institution will go out of the business of trade finance and become only a TPO. Who knows? Right now what the free economy shows us is that on the financial side there are a lot of competitors and lot of players that could be equally efficient at providing funds to Mexican exporters, but as long as there is a niche for Bancomext to finance SMEs, we will continue doing so.

Arguelles: I would say our experience in export promotion has also been very successful because we are a fully fledged TPO. On the financial side, we provide working capital, we provide funds for investment projects, we finance sales and exports of goods, we also have risk capital. If you think from A-Z what a company needs in terms of financial services, we have it. With regard to trade promotion activities, we have 43 offices all over the world, we have information services, counselling, training, a design centre. We provide funds for quality and ISO 9000 certification. Every year we help more than 2,000 SMEs to participate in the best international events and trade fairs all over the world. When you think about a one-stop, a front desk or a single window job for an SME that wants to export, Bancomext has it all. That’s why I would say our private sector has been very positive about us and the work we have been doing.

Arguelles: We charge for some of our services – not the full cost. We subsidize most of our services. But about five years ago we started charging for everything that we provide: photocopies, market studies, etc. It has helped us to try to run our TPO as a business and it has also helped our private sector to ask us for higher quality and better service. Our annual budget is around US$ 60 million. This year we will probably receive about US$ 4 million for the products and services we provide. We have a goal that in six years we should recover about US$ 10 million for products and services, around 15% of our total budget. That also puts pressure or provides incentives for our people to provide better quality and service.