Crédito bancario y crecimiento económico en México

This paper briefly describes the process in which foreign banks have increased their participation in the Mexican financial system; some of the main features of the credit market are also mentioned, such as scarcity, concentration and market power of the main participants, as well as high interest rates charged. On the demand side, some of the main elements that limit the access of small and medium enterprises to the private credit (that is, informality and informal credit) are also mentioned. The second part of the article explores the way banking credit supports economic growth. In spite of the fact that this relationship is found in many theoretical and empirical works, in the case of Mexico, it was not validated by this work. One of the possible causes of this result is that financial institutions in the country have not privileged the productive sector as the main destination of its credit. Commercial banks have preferred to provide credit to the government (due to its very low delinquency rates) and to consumption (because of the high interest rates they charge on it).