Mexico posts record inflows to bonds

Mexico drew in a record $31.65 billion of investment into its local-currency debt in 2011, the central bank said on Friday, as global investors sought refuge from Europe's deepening crisis. The total flow into peso debt rose 37 percent from 2010 and foreign investors sank $7.547 billion into debt in the fourth quarter of 2011, the most since the first quarter last year.
Equity investors were more skittish, pulling out $2.506 billion from Mexican stocks in the fourth quarter and bringing the full-year outflow to $6.245 billion, the central bank said in a report on the balance of payments last year. Mexico posted a $3.493 billion current account deficit in the fourth quarter of 2011. The 2011 accumulated current account deficit, the broadest measure of foreign trade in goods and services, was $8.789 billion, the equivalent of 0.8 percent of gross domestic product, the central bank said. The deficit widened from 0.3 percent of GDP registered in 2010.