Videgaray resigned a week after Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto met with USA presidential candidate Donald Trump in Mexico.
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Videgaray will not take another public post, the spokeswoman said.
Analysts said the peso was little moved by the news, since Meade, a former finance minister, is seen by investors as a technocrat committed to reining in the country’s debt.
Mexico’s finance minister was a key government architect of Donald Trump’s visit to Mexico.
Luis Carlos Ugalde, director general of the consultancy Integralia Consultores, said Videgaray’s resignation could be linked to the Trump visit. Newspaper columnists in Mexico have reported Videgaray was behind last week’s visit, in which Pena Nieto was criticized for not being forceful enough in rejecting Trump’s proposals and comments about Mexico.
Pena Nieto thanked Videgaray, 48, for his work and gave no reason for his departure.
There, he told the crowd Mexico would “100%” pay for a planned border wall, though he told reporters he had not discussed the issue with President Pena Nieto.
Videgaray also faced accusations of conflicts of interest when it was relvealed that he bought a house in an exclusive golf resort in the central State of Mexico, considered a Pena Nieto’s stronghold.
Deputy Interior Minister Luis Miranda, who is said to be a close friend and ally of Pena Nieto, replaced Meade as the head of the social development ministry. Trump has pledged to build a wall on the US border to keep out migrants from Mexico. Pena Nieto has said the meeting was needed to build bridges in case Trump gets elected.
The wall proposal has been criticized widely and fiercely in Mexico. “It was necessary to make him feel and know why Mexico does not accept his positions”.
A day later, Trump tweeted that Mexico would pay for the wall.
Pena Nieto, 50, has seen his public approval ratings plummet amid dissatisfaction with the government’s efforts against corruption, violence and growth below its own expectations that has dogged him since taking office in 2012.
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Trump has also threatened to carry out mass deportations and rewrite trade treaties crucial to the Mexican economy, as well as insulting people south of the border by referring to some Mexican immigrants as rapists and drug runners.
