Mexico’s top competition authority has urged Congress to stiffen fines for companies and even introduce prison sentences for executives found using anti-competitive practices.

In an interview with the FT, Eduardo Pérez Motta, who heads the Federal Competition Commission (Cofeco), said that harsher penalties were the best way of making the country’s corporate sector more competitive in a climate of rapidly deteriorating growth prospects for Mexico and the world economy. “Great crises can be great opportunities for change,” he said.