The central bank of Mexico auctioned US$400 million on Wednesday in an attempt to stem the depreciation of the Mexican peso.

The central bank of Mexico has auctioned off a total of US$666 million in the first two weeks of 2009 to boost the sagging peso.

The most recent auction made by the Bank of Mexico was on January 8, with an amount of US$266 million. The Bank of Mexico has adopted the strategy to auction currencies taken from the international reserves since October 8, 2008, when the peso weakened blow 14.00 to the dollar.

However, the peso's exchange rate with the dollar surpassed one to 14.31on Wednesday, losing about 27 cents from the rate on Tuesday.

In the last three months of 2008, the Bank of Mexico has auctioned at least US$16.1 billion.

(Xinhua News Agency January 15, 2009)