The council president, Alberto Espinosa, said in his weekly address that the estimated cost of crime represents 1.38 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).
"These are 212 billion pesos that could be used for solving other pressing needs of our country, such as poverty alleviation, infrastructure investment and boosting the quality of education," he said.The business leader said that, in recent years, Mexico has faced high human costs due to a significant increase in violence, a phenomenon that stems from internal factors, such as the inefficiency of the police forces, which are viewed with a high degree of distrust by Mexicans, and weak institutions, especially at the local level, among others.
He added that the persistence of social problems such as poverty and social inequality are important risk factors for security in Latin American countries. Moreover, violence in Mexico also depends on factors such as the liberalization of high-powered weapons in the United States and the strengthening of the Mexican cartels relative to the weakening of the Colombian cartels.
Coparmex indicated that according to the National Survey on Victimization and Perception of Public Safety, in 2010, [National Institute of Statistics] 4.4 percent of deaths were caused by homicide. Added to this, in 2011, 24.5 percent of the adult population was the victim of a crime.
He therefore considered that the next administration
"is obliged to meet the immense challenge of crime and violence in our country, identifying areas of opportunity and strengthening programs for fighting crime."The organization considers it important to strengthen crime prevention through effective measures nationwide, with clearly defined objectives and strategies to prevent more people and companies from being affected by organized crime.
"We demand that Congress give priority on its legislative agenda to attention to and discussion of laws and reforms that impact positively on the effectiveness of security strategies, such as the Law on Combating Money Laundering and the National Security Act, and, in parallel, that it push economic reforms that create better conditions for the development of families in Mexico, such as the labor reform currently being discussed, and the fiscal and energy reforms," he said.Spanish original