MEXICAN telecom mogul Carlos Slim Helu has built a corporate empire so vast that it’s nearly impossible for most Mexicans to go a day without slipping a few pesos into his pocket.

Last week, Forbes magazine estimated his net worth at US$49 billion. That represented a US$19 billion increase from 2006, the biggest one-year jump in a decade for anyone on the magazine’s annual list of the world’s richest people.

But with those tycoon philanthropists increasingly focused on giving away their fortunes, the 67-year-old Slim appears destined to surpass them both. Although his third-place ranking didn’t change from 2006, he increased his wealth by 63 percent. That’s a growth rate of US$2.2 million an hour.

When Mexicans talk on the phone or use the Internet, they’re almost certainly doing it through a company controlled by Slim, who in 1990 bought the old state-owned telephone company Telefonos de Mexico, or Telmex, and turned it into a cash machine.

Profit from that near-monopoly has bankrolled Slim’s telecom acquisitions around the region, propelling his America Movil wireless spinoff into the largest provider of mobile phone services in Latin America.

Mexicans buy cigarettes from Slim’s tobacco company, apply for mortgages at his bank and purchase policies at his insurance firm. Shoppers patronize his department stores, eat at his restaurants and browse for CDs at his music outlets.

Travelers fly his discount airline. Industrialists buy his auto parts, electronics, steel and ceramic tiles. The government hires his infrastructure firm to build highways, water treatment plants and oil platforms. More than 250,000 Mexican employees draw paychecks from his companies.

“It’s virtually cradle to grave. It’s Slimlandia,” said George Grayson, a Mexico expert at the College of William & Mary in Virginia.

The portly Slim has more than tripled his fortune since Forbes published its 2004 list, thanks to a string of acquisitions and the ballooning value of his telecom holdings. His current net worth is equivalent to nearly 6 percent of his nation’s GDP, a feat unmatched by even America’s robber barons at the height of their influence in the United States.

News of his spectacular increase in wealth elicited cheers and jeers in Mexico, where Slim is a polarizing figure. President Felipe Calderon is under pressure to confront business oligarchs blamed for squeezing competition, exacerbating income inequality and retarding Mexico’s economic growth.

“I have tremendous respect and affection for him personally,” said Jorge Castaneda, Mexico’s former foreign minister, who has publicly advocated breaking up Slim’s Telmex, which controls 94 percent of Mexico’s land lines. “The problem is that this is a country where we don’t have either the regulatory capacity or the political will to break up monopolies.”

The son of a Lebanese immigrant shopkeeper, Slim to some Mexicans represents the triumph of hustle over heredity in a nation where a few dozen families have held sway for generations.

He isn’t flamboyant or ostentatious. He has given foreign competitors fits. His ranking among the world’s business elite invokes pride in a country that often suffers from a chronic sense of underachievement.

“I’m rooting for him to take first place” on the Forbes richest list, said Teresa Sotelo, 50, a public accountant in the capital. “He’s Mexican. We always have to root for our countrymen.”

For others, Slim is the outsider who has become the consummate insider, a prime example of the crony capitalism that benefits the few at the expense of many. Nearly everyone gives him credit for being a savvy businessman. He made his first investments as a child and has coolly snapped up assets at bargain prices during periods of economic turmoil.

But critics say his purchase of Telmex was a sweetheart deal that merely replaced a public monopoly with a private one. Studies have shown that Mexicans pay some of the highest telecom rates in the world, which is crippling the nation’s competitiveness.

Rivals say Telmex has thrown up numerous roadblocks, including high connection fees that have blocked their market access. Regulators have had little success in leveling the playing field. Slim’s companies routinely use Mexico’s lumbering court system to stave off authorities’ rulings against them.

Still, the constant drumbeat of criticism may be forcing Mexico’s monopolists to soften their image. Slim, who has ceded most of the day-to-day control of his empire to his sons, recently said he plans to devote most of his time to philanthropy. (SD-Agencies)