UPDATE 1-Mexico has enough reserves to face crisis-president

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MEXICO CITY, Oct 9 (Reuters) - Mexico's President Felipe Calderon said on Thursday the country has enough foreign reserves to face the world's worst financial crisis in 80 years.

"We have healthy and strong public finances and without them this crisis would have destroyed our economy," said Calderon in a televised address.

"Unlike in the past, when a lack of dollars led us into terrible crises, today we have foreign reserves of more than $90 billion and we practically have our external debt paid through the next year and a half," he said.

The global financial crisis has sent Mexican stocks and the peso tumbling this week despite the central bank selling $2.5 billion in the last two days to try to support the struggling currency.

The government slashed its growth forecast for 2009 on Wednesday to 1.8 percent from 3 percent, in expectation of slowing exports, tourism, investment and remittance flows from Mexicans living abroad.

But Calderon downplayed the negative effects of the current chaos in global markets, saying the fundamentals of Mexico's economy were solid.

"We have the lowest inflation rate in Latin America and our economy keeps growing and generating jobs, certainly much slower but it keeps growing," he said.

Mexico's annual inflation dipped in September from more than a five-year high to 5.47 percent, down from 5.57 percent in August thanks to lower price rises in produce foods, giving the central bank some much needed breathing room.

Calderon, a conservative, repeated his promise to propose a five-point spending plan to Congress in an effort to reactivate the economy. He wants to use 12 billion pesos ($971 million) from a state fund to build an oil refinery and other energy infrastructure, with construction starting next year.

(For more stories on the growing global financial crisis, click on [nCRISIS])

(Reporting by Alistair Bell and Mica Rosenberg; Editing by Kim Coghill)