Banco de Avío

The Banco de Avío para Fomento de la Industria Nacional, the first industrial development bank founded in Latin America, was set up by the Mexican government on 16 October 1830 to provide long-term loans at low rates of interest to the nation's fledgling cotton textile industry. Capitalized by a levy of 20 percent on the duties from cotton textile imports, the bank was to have capital of 1 million pesos. During its twelve years of operation it made loans to twenty-nine industrial enterprises. Most of the bank's loans went to cotton and wool textile firms, but it also extended credit to paper mills, iron foundries, and other enterprises. The capital it provided supplemented the equity capital raised by the industrialists; roughly 6 percent of the capital invested in the textile industry came from the bank. The bank was dissolved on 23 September 1842 by order of General Antonio López de Santa Anna, who had already alienated much of its assets in an attempt to obtain cash for a bankrupt fisc.

See alsoBanking: Since 1990 .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Linda Ivette Colón Reyes. Los orígenes de la burguesía y el Banco de Avío (1982).

Robert A. Potash, The Mexican Government and Industrial Development in the Early Republic: The Banco de Avío (1983).

Additional Bibliography

Flores Clair, Eduardo. El Banco de avío minero novohispano: Crédito, finanzas y deudores. México, D.F.: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 2001.

Gómez Galvarriato, Aurora. ed. La industria textil en México. México, D.F.: Instituto Mora: Colegio de Michoacán: Colegio de México: Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas-UNAM, 1999.

                                    Stephen H. Haber