Avio Bank

The Banco del Avío was founded after the Independence of Mexico, in October 1830 during the presidency of Anastasio Bustamante by the then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lucas Alamán; and it becomes the main antecedent of the Mexican banking tradition, in order to lend money for machinery industry processes.

Lucas Alamán, founder of the Banco de Avío.

The first development agency created in Mexico to boost industry and the growth of the national economy was the Banco de Avío, established on October 16, 1830 by Lucas Alamán. The function of this institution was to grant loans to private entrepreneurs interested in acquiring machinery for the manufacturing industry, with five percent annual interest on said loans. In its twelve years of activity, Banco de Avío granted loans for just over one million pesos, basically to the cotton industry. Although some historians consider that the Banco de Avío harvested few corns and many failures, they do not fail to recognize the interest it had in introducing better technology, and in transforming the productive system prevailing since the viceroyalty.

It was closed in 1842 by a decree issued by General Antonio López de Santa Anna, arguing that the bank could no longer sustain itself financially and that, on the other hand, the textile sector —the bank's primary objective— had expanded in Mexico and that he did not need financial support.