With the representation of the President, Enrique Peña Nieto, the Secretary of Economy, Ildefonso Guajardo Villarreal, attended the official opening of SunEdison, a plant dedicated to the assembly of solar modules, in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua; it is the first company dedicated to the manufacture of photovoltaic panels in Mexico, created in collaboration with Flextronics.

Ildefonso Guajardo explained that when the goals are aligned "is when Mexicans can prepare successful things, push in the same direction, we understand the signs of the times and that is when we can do things more efficiently".

He added that "when we speak of the great project of Flextronics with SunEdison we are seeing that in the production of photovoltaic cells there are only 10 percent of national integrated value". In this regard, he said that, to be more competitive, "we need to integrate intermediate goods in this value chain and go gradually in the creation of competitive conditions of Mexicans to increase the value of those chains".

In turn, the Governor of the State of Chihuahua, César Horacio Duarte Jáquez, recognized the work done by the Secretary Ildefonso Guajardo in the management of the investments at the border and also emphasized that in Chihuahua, "the value of the transformation Mexico has taken, has also been assessed".

For his part, the Vice President of Operations of Flextronics in Mexico, Gabriel Macías Martínez, said recently over a year SunEdison and Flextronics started this journey as technology partners and "thanks to the talent and competitiveness of 1,100 Juarenses employees we have accomplished this boot with a production of 1.3 million solar panels a year, making it one of the largest producers in this sector in Latin America with leading technologies for the generation of clean energy".

The Director General of SunEdison in Mexico, Peter Eschenbach, said that "the plant in Ciudad Juárez is a key element in our growth strategy for the Mexican market"; He stressed that the company entered the Mexican market in 2012 and aims to become one of the most important players in the field of renewable energy in the country. Today, the company is developing more than 800 MW of wind projects and solar energy in different areas of the country.

The factory has five production lines and assemble three panels per minute, which gives a total of 27,000 modules a week. Currently, these panels are used for energy projects, both large plants like installations on commercial rooftops and housing, in Chile, the United States and Europe; while both companies expect to use them in Mexico, in the near future.

After the meeting with the governor of the state and business leaders, the Secretary lldefonso Guajardo Villarreal spoke with a representative group of car dealers, where he stressed that there should be an inter-secretarial dialogue to define a path forward for the management of the market, respecting the physical-mechanical and environmental standards in the importation of vehicles.

He stressed that it must be determined in what conditions can expedite a process that should be aimed at those cars that comply with the environmental conditions and those who are really covered by the American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to be admitted into the country.

"The idea is how to reach an agreement that allows us to regularize an orderly outline, not the messy scheme with the use of injunctions that were violating the Mexican law and that were breaking violations of environmental regulations," he said.

He stressed that, for the first time in the history of the Mexican automotive industry, in the first half of this year, there was an increase of 22 percent in the national consumption of vehicles, which complements the success story of the automobile industry in exports and whose performance had been unfortunate in the domestic market.

In this tour, the Secretary of Economy was accompanied by the General Coordinator of Federal Delegations of the Secretariat of Economy (SE, by its initials in Spanish), Jorge Cantú Valderrama; and the Chief of the SE in Chihuahua, David Dajlala Ricarte. They were also present Senator Lilia Merodio; President of the National Chamber of Transformation Industry (CANACINTRA, in Spanish) of the entity, Francisco Santini; the Secretary of Economy of the State, Manuel Russek Valles; and the Mayor of Ciudad Juárez, Enrique Serrano, among others.