Mexico gets female central bank head, supreme court justice
Nov 24, 2021, 12:59 AM | Updated: 3:02 pm
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s president nominated the first woman to serve as governor of the country’s central bank Wednesday, saying that getting women into high office was a priority.
The move comes one day after another female justice was named to the Supreme Court.
“Women continue to be a priority,” President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Wednesday. “For the first time, a woman is going to head the Bank of Mexico.”
But there was little room for celebration about the nomination of Victoria Rodríguez Ceja to head the Bank of Mexico. She still must be approved by the Senate.
On Wednesday, the Mexican peso dropped to 21.44 to $1, chalking up a loss of almost 2.5% in two days. And the country’s statistics institute said annual inflation was running at about 7% in late November, neither of which are good signs.
Banco Base said in a report that the nomination of Rodríguez Ceja, who currently serves as an assitant finance secretary, “was a surprise for markets and generated uncertainty about expectations for the central bank’s monetary policy.”
The central bank has been slow to raise its base interest rate, currently around 5%. But the bank has to walk a fine line to avoid choking off the economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.
On Tuesday, Loretta Ortiz was named to Mexico’s Supreme Court, four of whose 11 justices are now women.
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