Mexico says to spend $4.5 bln on aid to poor

CNN February 9, 1999 Mexico says to spend $4.5 bln on aid to poor

                  MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -- Mexico said on Monday it would spend $4.5
                  billion dollars this year on programmes to help the nearly one-third of the
                  country's population living in grinding poverty.

                  "The marginalized in Mexico are outside the market...and while their situation
                  does not result from globalization, they are not isolated from it," said Social
                  Development Minister Esteban Moctezuma at a ceremony unveiling the
                  government's annual anti-poverty effort, which will include food, healthcare,
                  housing and farm aid.

                  Moctezuma is seen among potential ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party
                  (PRI) candidates for the 2000 presidential elections. But President Ernesto
                  Zedillo said the poverty programme would not be politically motivated.

                  "The government's social policies are not linked to any kind of patronage
                  because its programmes are not bartered or conditioned upon any political
                  criteria," Zedillo said at the event.

                  The PRI, which has long been criticised for trading government handouts for
                  votes, has recently blasted the leftist opposition Party of the Democratic
                  Revolution (PRD) for selling discount milk in packages emblazoned with the
                  names of its congressional representatives.

                  Moctezuma described Mexico's 96 million people as divided into three
                  social spheres: a highly developed minority seen on Mexico City's streets
                  with imported automobiles and cellular phones, the middle and working
                  classes, and 26 million living in extreme poverty.