MEXICO: Consumers on the Offensive

[Derechos]

MEXICO CITY, Mar 13, 2010 (IPS) - Mexican consumers are currently facing a combination of price rises, economic recession and lack of legal protection in the face of abuses committed by providers of goods and services.

These problems will be the main points on the agenda of the first national convention of consumer rights groups in Mexico, to be held in the capital Saturday.

"We want to build a national agenda for the consumer rights movement, to fight monopolistic practices or services that do not live up to what they promise," Dolores Rojas, campaigns coordinator in the Mexican office of the international development agency Oxfam, one of the organisers of the convention, told IPS.

Although a federal consumer protection agency (PROFECO) was created in 1976 under the Economy Ministry, it lacks legal teeth.

"There is a significant transfer of resources from consumers to the large food industry groups, which control entire markets," Alfonso Ramírez, founder and head of El Barzón, the powerful Mexican debtors' movement that arose after the 1995 crisis which decimated savings in bank accounts, told IPS.

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