The Official Federal Gazette published on August 12 an AGREEMENT and bulletin B. SNICE 13/2021, by which some activities in the Ministry of Economy are suspended, derived from the increase in confirmed cases of personnel who have been infected with Covid-19. To mitigate the propagation of the virus within the agency, and thereby safeguard the integrity and physical security of both workers and the public users, these activities, in the following agencies, are suspended:

A) GENERAL DIRECTORATE OF COMMERCIAL FACILITATION AND FOREIGN TRADE.

The suspended processes and procedures will be the following:

a) The suspension will apply to IMMEX, PROSEC, and DRAWBACK processes and procedures, both new applications and those initiated before the Agreement entered into force, whether they have been submitted physically, by email, or through the Mexican Digital Foreign Trade Window (VUCEM).

b) During the suspension of terms, those days will be considered as non-working for all legal purposes, so, in that period, the terms of the procedures mentioned above will not run, both for the Ministry of Economy and for the parties.

c) Procedures received by any means during the period of suspension of terms will be considered as received on the business day immediately following the end of the suspension above, the day on which the terms that have been suspended under the Agreement will also resume.

d) All the formalities and procedures that do not correspond to IMMEX, PROSEC, and DRAWBACK will continue their ordinary course.

The above will expire 30 business days after the Agreement was published in the Official Federal Gazette, and with the clarification of the bulletin, the terms will be resumed on September 27, 2021.

B) UNIT OF LEGAL SUPPORT, OF THE GENERAL DIRECTORATE OF CONSTITUTIONAL AND LEGAL PROCEDURES, AND OF DISPUTES COORDINATION

All the activities of this unit regarding the defense and representation of the interests of the Ministry of Economy before the different jurisdictional, contentious-administrative, administrative, and labor authorities in all areas of its competence are suspended.

C) FILING/CLERK’S OFFICES AT THE MINISTRY OF ECONOMY

They must refrain from receiving promotions, lawsuits, amparo lawsuits, subpoenas, legal requirements, as well as any other notification from the jurisdictional, contentious-administrative, administrative, and work authorities in all their areas of competence whose attention corresponds to the Legal Support Unit, the General Directorate of Constitutional and Legal Procedures and the Litigation Coordination.

The attention of the matters in which the Ministry of Economy has already been required or summoned at the time of the entry into force of this Agreement, and a procedural term is passing; the appropriate actions must be provided for the timely relief of the matter, either through remote means when the workload or nature of the matter allows it or extraordinarily through the establishment of personnel guards. In this case, guards must be limited to the personnel strictly necessary to attend to the matter in question.

The indications for the Legal Support Unit and the Filing/Clerks’ Offices will expire 15 business days following its publication in the Official Federal Gazette, which corresponds to September 3, 2021.

CLARIFICATION IN PROCEDURES - VUCEM

The Ministry clarifies that, due to the technical characteristics of the VUCEM, the business days within it are configured and linked for all the procedures of the Ministry of Economy, then, because the terms suspension is only applicable to the IMMEX, PROSEC, and DRAWBACK procedures, the deadlines will be reflected in said Window as working days. However, the Agreement’s provisions must be observed since its publication in the Official Federal Gazette produces full legal effects.

Example: If a procedure in the VUCEM on August 11, 2021, had 4 elapsed days, the VUCEM will continue counting the terms, and on September 27, 2021, it will show 35 elapsed days; however, this term is not the official one, according to the Agreement, and in reality, September 27, 2021, will be day 5.

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