MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's president on Friday invited the heads of some of the most prominent companies in the country to defend the merits of his predecessors' energy policies, which he says give the private sector preferential treatment over public sector interests.
"Big business corporations and retail chains pay lower rates than consumers for household consumption... and we believe those subsidies paid with the people's money should disappear," President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador told a regular news conference.
The president and executives of state-owned power company, the Comision Federal de Electricidad (CFE), have criticized energy laws enacted by previous administrations, as well as the companies benefiting from those policies. Lopez Obrador characterized the lower prices paid by companies as a state-sponsored subsidy and called them an "injustice."
But, Lopez Obrador added, it was only fair that the beneficiaries of former President Enrique Pena Nieto's policies have the right to reply.
He invited the bosses of Walmart (NYSE:WMT)'s Mexico unit (Walmex), conglomerate Femsa, breadmaker Grupo Bimbo, and Spain's Iberdrola (OTC:IBDRY) to debate the existing laws at the presidential palace in Mexico City, without specifying a time.
He also invited representatives of local newspapers Reforma and El Universal, as well as Spain's El Pais to come as well, arguing the media has taken the side of the private sector against his reform of the energy sector.
Last week, a Mexican court ordered a definitive suspension of Lopez Obrador's contentious new electricity law, which seeks to strengthen CFE. The president called for the Supreme Court to settle the matter.
Lopez Obrador noted that Bimbo and Walmex both filed legal challenges against the law. He described the appeals as an effort to maintain favorable terms from prior regulation.
Walmex declined to comment. Femsa and Bimbo did not immediately respond to requests for comment.