Mexico City [Mexico], December 2: Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Friday announced a 20 percent increase in the minimum wage starting 2024, calling it a "historic" move.
Starting Jan. 1, Mexico's minimum wage will be 249 pesos (about 14 U.S. dollars) per day, the president said during his daily press conference.
"This is historic, because it means that we are going to fulfill what we offered at the beginning of our government to double the minimum wage in real terms," Lopez Obrador told reporters.
When Lopez Obrador took office on Dec. 1, 2018, the minimum wage was 88 pesos per day, or 2,687 pesos per month, according to the president.
Raising wages was achieved through consensus between the government, labor and private sector.
In a statement released separately, the Employers Confederation of the Mexican Republic (Coparmex) celebrated the measure, saying the objective is to ensure households' well-being with the equivalent of two basic baskets of food and non-food items.
"That is, the income of two people employed in the formal sector is sufficient to support an average Mexican family of four," the agency said.
"Despite the difficult circumstances and challenges that we have had to overcome due to the ravages of the pandemic and increases in labor costs, our goal of recovering the purchasing power of the general minimum wage remains unchanged," Coparmex added.
Source: Xinhua