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 Business News | February 2007 
Wal-Mart Budgets Almost a Billion for Mexico this Year
 Agencia EFE S.A.
| | In 2006 the company notched just over $18 billion in sales, a 16-percent hike over the previous year. |
Retailing giant Wal-Mart plans to invest $981 million in Mexico this year in an expansion drive that envisions 125 new stores and the opening of at least 10 bank branches, the chain's first of their kind in the world.
Eduardo Solorzano, the top executive of Wal-Mart Mexico, told a press conference that the Wal-Mart banking operation will be launched after June and that the program will have between 10 and 12 branches by the end of the year, most of them in and around the capital.
Plans call for up to 60 branch offices at Wal-Mart stores throughout the nation by the end of 2008, though that degree of expansion requires approval of Mexican federal regulators, Solorzano noted.
He said some 80 percent of the Mexican population of just over 100 million does not have a bank account or credit card, and that the company sees huge potential in that statistic.
The executive said the 2007 plan will result in a 12-percent increase in installed capacity in Mexico, where it currently has 893 stores. He estimated the growth will provide employment to some 20,000 new hires.
Wal-Mart is Mexico's top retailer, present in 139 Mexican cities and employing more than 140,000 people.
In 2006 the company notched just over $18 billion in sales, a 16-percent hike over the previous year. Profits came in at $1.129 billion in 2006, up 26 percent from 2005. |
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