[Debt, regulations and economic growth in Mexico]

In the Mexican economy four policies forced the State to redefine its strategy of development. They were: 1) the considerable purchase by the government of firms that were not strategic or of national priority; 2) the preservation of a structure of high industrial protection; 3) an excessive reliance of the economy on oil, and 4) the perception of the increase in the price of oil as a permanent and not a temporary phenomenon. By the seventies the first two phenomena restricted the possibilities of economic growth which translated into inflation. In the eighties the high dependency on oil and the weakness of its monetary value deepened those trends. The external debt became the single most significant constraint of development. The government was forced to reduce drastically substantive public expenditure. Health was one of the areas more severely affected.