MEXICO: Mexican exports this year are set rise 5 percent on increased demand for automobile shipments and other manufactured goods built in Latin America’s second-largest economy.
That 5 percent equates to roughly 53,310 more 20-foot-equivalent containers moving out of Mexico ports than in 2014, according to World Trade Service, a sister product of JOC.com within IHS. U.S., China and Columbia are set to be the biggest importers of Mexican goods and commodities.
The growth is a testament to Mexico’s recovering economy, which for decades has hinged on exports to its American neighbors north of the border. With the American economy on the mend and the U.S. dollar strengthening over other world currencies, for the first time in years total U.S. imports are surging.
The U.S., which imports nearly 80 percent of all Mexican exports, is expected to import 6 percent more of those goods in 2015 year-over-year. China is expected to import 7 percent more by the year’s end.
The increased demand is a boon for Mexico’s economy, which expanded at the fastest clip in two years in the fourth quarter of 2014, Bloomberg reported. Mexico’s gross domestic product climbed 2.6 percent year-over-year in the last three months of 2014. Analysts attributed the news to a rebound in North American demand for Mexican manufactured goods.
The nation’s GDP got another boost in the first quarter of 2015, up 2.5 percent year-over-year.
Nevertheless, earlier this month, the Mexican government slashed its economic growth forecasts, claiming export projections were not delivering and earlier estimates on their growth had been overblown.
But, it was exports of oil, that the Mexican government fears will hamper their recent economic resurgence. Industrial output, which includes factory and crude oil production, fell 0.2 percent quarter-over-quarter in the first three months of 2015, the steepest drop in nearly two years.
The Mexican manufacturing sector has been whirring away this year. In April, Mexican automobile exports hit a record high.
Output of cars and light trucks rose 14 percent year-over-year to 283,392 units, the Mexican Auto Industry Association announced earlier this month. Automobile exports were up 15 percent year-over-year at 233,515 units — 71 percent of which went right over the border to markets in the U.S.
Oil is one of the United States’ top imports from its southern neighbor, a list that includes mining equipment; crude minerals and vegetable products. But the Mexican government still hopes it’s the manufacturing sector will balance the oil trade deficit now hitting the country’s economy.
“The U.S. economy is expected to recover its dynamism during the year, which will strengthen Mexico’s non-oil exports,” Deputy Finance Minister Fernando Aportela said at a news conference earlier this month, according to Bloomberg.
