Amendment of General Rules and Standards Applicable to Mexican Foreign Trade Matters

On October 12, 2007 the Mexican Department of the Economy (Secretaría de Economía or SE) published in the DOF amendments to thegeneral rules and standards applicable to Mexican foreign trade. Such amendments provide public notice of various dates originally establishedfor complying with obligations related to the conversion of previously existing Maquila programs to the new export program established in theIMMEX Decree. The deadlines for complying with obligations were modified to, among others, provide the following: (i) deadline forratifying the address at which IMMEX program operations are undertaken, extending such to the last business day of May 2008; (ii) deadlinefor presenting information that has not been filed with the National Statistics, Geography and Information Institute (Instituto Nacional deEstadística, Geografía e Informática or INEGI), extending such date to January 20, 2008; (iii) extending the deadline for presenting the annualreport for IMMEX program participants until January 30, 2008; and (iv) extending the term in which the SE will assign new IMMEX programnumbers currently pending, which deadline is now January 30, 2008, providing that Maquila or Pitex program numbers may be used untilFebruary 1, 2008. Additionally, the SE established that companies certified to operate under the IMMEX Decree as shelter operators maycontinue with an individual IMMEX program for each foreign client they serve in order to facilitate the technical and material production foroperating their individual programs. Finally, the SE amended the guidelines for filling out certificates of country of origin (lines 1 and 6regarding data of the exporter and invoice), and the attachment pertaining to previous permits (specifying that for a vehicle to be considered“used” there is no maximum weight limit as long as its weight is not less than 5,000 kilograms, or approximately 11,000 pounds).