Spotlight: Security spending heavily bites corporate earnings in Mexico

Security spending is heavily biting corporate earnings in Mexico as companies in the Latin American country have to spend a large sum of their profits to protect property and personnel every year.

Protection against crime cost companies in Mexico, including foreign companies, between 6 percent and 12 percent of their earnings, said Samuel Cacho, president of Mexico's National Private Security Council (CNSP)

"Foreign companies invest 8 to 12 percent, and Mexican companies 6 to 8 percent, of their annual sales in security," Cacho told Xinhua on Saturday.

Latest figures from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography of Mexico (INEGI) show that in 2013 alone, spendings on surveillance and protection against crime like theft and others cost the Mexican private sector as much as 6.4 billion U.S. dollars.

Shops and companies pay on average from 611 to 815 dollars a month for each certified security guard hired to protect a store, plant, business or truck carrying merchandise, said Cacho, whose organization represents Mexico's 63 leading private security firms.

Member companies of the CNSP all together command an army of 40,000 private security guards working at some 10,000 companies throughout Mexico.

"The biggest expense for a company are the security guards," since electronic surveillance systems or burglar alarms represent one-time expenditure, plus ensuing maintenance fees, Cacho said.

Still, a cutting-edge monitoring system against break-ins and intruders can cost from 1,000 dollars to more than 100,000 dollars for a large corporation.

Jorg Altenheimer, director of Key Business Process Solutions Mexico, a wholesaler of brands that provide integrated surveillance solutions, said those sums represent the average a company will spend to install high-end smart cameras that can trigger alarms or even open or close access doors in case of an accident.

Some 33.6 percent of the more than 3.8 million businesses in Mexico in 2013 were victims of crime, mainly theft or armed robbery of premises or delivery vehicles, and to a lesser degree, extortion or fraud, according to the INEGI.

While only one out of three companies has been hit by crime, 58.5 percent of businesses consider crime to be their biggest problem, even more serious than taxes, the low purchasing power of salaried workers, bureaucracy or corruption, it shows.

Business owners are not just protecting their shops, offices, warehouses or factories, but also hiring bodyguards and arming themselves with non-lethal weapons.

Antonio Trewick, director of operations at Aprinsa, a company that supplies tactical and defensive gear for Mexican police forces and private security firms, said one of his company's bestsellers is a pistol that shoots a tear gas-like gel that irritates the eyes, nose and throat.

Called "Guardian Angel, " the non-lethal pistol costs 80 dollars and is a standard security tool that Aprinsa's client security firms give to families that hire their services, said Trewick.

The private security industry in Mexico has boomed in the past decade to represent nearly 1.5 percent of the gross domestic product in 2015, industry insiders estimated.

However, Cacho, head of the CNSP, believes the industry has grown not because of Mexico's high crime rates, but because it is maturing.

"I don't believe that crime has made the security firms grow excessively. I think it's the normal growth that any country sees," said Cacho. Endi