“This whole trend of nearshoring either friendshoring, whatever you want to call it, is already happening, you don’t have to wait for it to arrive. The Foreign Direct Investment data for last year of more than 30,000 million dollars and for the first quarter of this year are very good data, they are above the historical average,” said Gabriel Casillas.
In 2021, Mexico received 32,000 million dollars in Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) placing it in the tenth place of the economies that more money receive for this concept.
Casillas added that a change is being observed in the globalization of economies and proof of this is what happened with the war between Russia and Ukraine. Now, companies want their suppliers to be in a friendly country and this is what benefits Mexico. However, he warned, this will bring more inflation.
Since the pandemic began, supply chains have been under severe pressure from lockdowns and unpredictable factory closures around the world. This triggered many companies to seek to reduce their risks.
Adding a context of trade disputes between the United States and China, it is “relatively natural that Mexico benefits,” since developing infrastructure and hiring competitive labor is cheaper in the country, according to an analysis by the firm Franklin Templeton.
Even Benjamín Theurer, head of research and Latam equities at Barclays, added that there are Asian companies coming to Mexico to be more efficient in the times that products arrive via exports.
“We are seeing the same development within Mexico with the need to grow with logistics centers on the part of e-commerce, which is growing very solidly and all of this requires investment in logistics such as transportation and last-mile delivery” , said.
In 2021, electronic commerce (e-commerce) had a growth of 27% compared to 2020, placing it as the country with the greatest expansion in this area and exceeding the world average by more than 10 percentage points, according to data from the Association Mexican Online Sales (AMVO).
Information from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) calculates that the potential gain for Latin America and the Caribbean from the opportunities for nearshoring in the short and medium terms they can represent an increase of up to 78,000 million dollars, with Mexico and Brazil being the most benefited countries.
The great opportunities, according to the IDB, are also the automotive industry, textiles, pharmaceuticals and renewable energies.
