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 Editorials | Opinions | September 2005 
'Poverty Not Good Business'
 Wire services
Telecommunications magnate Carlos Slim, Latin America's richest man, called for an effort to reduce poverty, saying it was good business.
"We have to fight poverty for ethical reasons, but also for economic reasons," Slim said in a speech to students. Former Spanish Prime Minister Felipe González, speaking at the same event, echoed Slim's comments, noting "poverty is not good business."
"A businessman has to feel solidarity with the country he lives in," said Slim. "Wealth must be seen a responsibility, not as a privilege. The responsibility is to create more wealth."
Slim's companies include Telmex, Mexico's main telephone carrier, which sponsors the charity foundation that held Wednesday's event.
"It's like having an orchard, you have to give away the fruit, but not the trees," he said. He picked the tourism and entertainment industries as good targets for investment.
In a veiled criticism of some free-market policies, Slim said "economic stability is a policy instrument, not an objective." He accused the country of frittering away the current boom by importing too many goods and services and said Mexico should rely more on itself for things like engineering services.
Slim said Mexico should take advantage of the "good conditions" it has right now, with high oil prices, rising remittances from workers abroad and steady tourism income, to increase its investment in infrastructure, and he advocated opening such projects to private investment.
Slim has established his own private construction and financing firms in hopes of getting such contracts.
He said private investment in Mexico's deficient water treatment services "could solve this water problem we have in a few short years."
Such ideas have proved controversial in some parts of Latin America, where private water contracts have sometimes met with violent resistance from poor people angry at being charged for the service.
Slim has long been known for proposing public interest projects from which he also can turn a profit, like his sponsorship of the renovation of Mexico City's historic downtown sector, where he has made huge real estate investments.
The 65-year-old Slim jumped to No. 4 in Forbes magazine's 2005 rankings of the world's wealthiest people, with an estimated net worth of US23.8 billion.
Slim and his family have bought Brazil's largest long-distance carrier, Embratel Participacoes SA, and snapped up AT&T Corp.'s Latin America division, as well as leading mobile phone carriers elsewhere in South America.
The son of Lebanese immigrants and an engineer by training, he first made his money in retail and then branched into telecommunications. |
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