Mexico needs to invest nearly 150 billion pesos (US$8.25bn) in infrastructure to take advantage of nearshoring, president-elect Claudia Sheinbaum’s coordinator for regional economic development and relocalization, Altagracia Gómez Sierra told a forum hosted by employers’ confederation Coparmex.
She added that the private sector will have to play a role and that the 300bn pesos from the budget will not suffice.
“The private sector has a lot to do in that matter. We have redesigned a new model of public-private conversion which is called Mexican strategic companies,” El Norte daily quoted her as saying.
According to Gómez, the investment arrangements under that model involve real estate trusts, capital development certificates, known as CKDs, and others.
Gómez also said that welfare programs will remain in place to enable everyone to take advantage of nearshoring.
“The welfare programs will continue, but we also cannot go back to being a large government. We must be more efficient, automatize, be agile, with a transparent government, and digitization helps,” she said.
Figures from local economic think tank IMCO show that during 1Q24, federal spending was 452bn pesos higher than in the same period of 2023.
Of this increase, 206bn pesos went to subsidies and federal transfers to states, i.e., welfare programs, and only 50bn pesos went to infrastructure.
Adequate infrastructure, energy supply, availability of industrial land and lack of a skilled workforce are presenting challenges companies that relocate to Mexico have to tackle.
Coparmex head Francisco López said during the event that small and medium-sized companies should also benefit from nearshoring.
“One of the great challenges of nearshoring is how to integrate more small and medium-sized companies into supply, service provision and export chains. The plan C of those companies should be training, credit access and secure commercialization,” Gómez replied.
