MEXICO CITY – President Felipe Calderón named his pro-business former chief of staff as economy secretary on Wednesday as the country battles rising inflation and falling remittances from Mexicans working abroad.

Calderón said he chose Gerardo Ruiz for the post because “he has been a businessman who has lived and suffered the situation of businesses in Mexico in the flesh and has been on the other side of the fence” from government.

Ruiz, who is also an industrial engineer, is one of conservative president Calderón's closest collaborators and was a top manager of his 2006 presidential campaign. A former president of the Council of the Social Union of Mexican Businesses, Ruiz replaces outgoing secretary Eduardo Sojo, who was named president of the national statistics institute.

Ruiz has a tough job ahead: Mexico's economy, the second-largest in Latin America, is expected to slow from 3.2 percent growth last year amid a downturn in the U.S., which buys 80 percent of Mexican exports and employs millions of immigrant workers.

Remittances from Mexicans working abroad, the country's second-largest source of foreign income after oil exports, dropped about 2 percent to US$11.6 billion between January and June – the first sustained decline since records have been kept – as a cooling U.S. economy cost immigrants jobs, particularly in construction.

Rising food and fuel prices have meanwhile pushed Mexican inflation to 5.26 percent in June, its highest level in nearly four years.

Inflation, unemployment and other key economic figures once tracked by Mexico's central bank are now handled by the national statistics institute, which Sojo will head. The institute became independent in 2006.

“It's indispensable that this agency be in good hands, in the hands of a capable, honest person with a profound dedication to service to the country,” Calderón said of Sojo.