Back

COMEXI-PCNS webinar series 2024: Nearshoring boom: lessons from Mexico and Morocco

May 30, 2024
Related topics: 

Nearshoring in Mexico

Nearshoring in Mexico presents both importance and challenges for businesses. The country's proximity to the United States, its largest trading partner, offers strategic advantages such as reduced transportation costs and shorter lead times, making it an attractive destination for nearshoring operations. Additionally, Mexico boasts a skilled labor force, particularly in industries like automotive, aerospace, and electronics manufacturing, which align well with the needs of many nearshoring companies. Moreover, Mexico benefits from trade agreements like the USMCA (United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement), providing preferential access to key markets. However, nearshoring in Mexico also faces challenges, including security concerns in certain regions, bureaucratic hurdles, and regulatory complexities that may impede the ease of doing business. Infrastructure constraints, such as inadequate transportation networks and energy supply, can increase operational costs and pose logistical challenges for companies. Addressing these challenges while leveraging Mexico's strategic advantages is crucial for maximizing the potential of nearshoring in the country.

Nearshoring in Morocco

Nearshoring in Morocco is significant due to its proximity to Europe. This stability, coupled with developed infrastructure and efficient logistics, facilitates seamless operations and reduces investor uncertainties. It offers advantages like reduced transportation costs and access to a skilled workforce, particularly in the engineering and IT sectors. Trade agreements and government investments in infrastructure support nearshoring activities, making Morocco attractive for European companies to optimize their supply chains. The country's political stability, developed infrastructure, and efficient logistics bolster its appeal to investors. Macro factors such as trade openness and stable exchange rates further enhance its attractiveness. Moreover, Morocco boasts solid legal frameworks that prioritize and protect business rights and economic incentives, ensuring a stable and predictable business environment. However, challenges persist, including skill mismatches, technology transfer, and SME upgrading. Addressing these, alongside pressing concerns like achieving carbon neutrality and digitalizing the economy, is essential for Morocco to fully leverage its potential as a competitive nearshoring hub and sustain its appeal to foreign investors.

Importance of the webinar

In this context, the exchange of experiences and lessons learned between Mexico and Morocco is instrumental in bolstering their nearshoring opportunities and overcoming challenges in this domain. By sharing insights into their respective nearshoring endeavors, both countries can leverage each other's strengths and address common obstacles more effectively. Through collaboration and knowledge sharing, COMEXI and PCNS can contribute to identifying innovative solutions, actionable strategies, and the maximal capitalization of trends in the global nearshoring landscape. This exchange can also result in ideas that foster mutual growth and competitiveness in the nearshoring sector, that help drive economic development and create new opportunities for both nations.

RELATED CONTENT

  • Download PDF
    The Republic of Mauritius and the African Continental Free Trade Area:Opportunities and Challenges in a post COVID-19 environment
    Authors
    Isabelle Tsakok
    November 4, 2021
    The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) gives Mauritius the golden opportunity to access Africa’s vast market of 1.3 billion people, with an estimated GDP of $3.4 trillion. This opportunity could not have come at a better time, as Mauritius suffered a heavy blow from the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. It also lost its preferential trade agreements on sugar and textiles in the 2000s, and has struggled with diminished export and productivity growth. To turn this opportunity into ...
  • Download PDF
    Summary Report - International Taxation from Global South Perspectives
    Authors
    Badr Mandri
    Babou Diasso
    Aaditri Solankii
    November 4, 2021
    South Centre (SC) in collaboration with the Policy Center for the New South (PCNS) organized on October 13, 2021, a webinar on the issue of International Taxation from the Global South perspectives. Tax revenue mobilization plays a key role in financing the economic and social development of countries. When well designed and implemented, tax policy can help developing countries raise revenue and increase their spending, especially in the social sector. Indeed, tax revenue as a share ...
  • Supply Chain Disruptions and Bottlenecks Dampen the Global Economic Recovery
    Authors
    Otaviano Canuto
    November 2, 2021
    Scarcity of inputs and goods has been felt all over the world because of disruptions to global value chains since the beginning of the pandemic. Factory closures in China at the beginning of 2020, lockdowns in many countries and, subsequently, congestion in logistics networks for transporting goods, capacity constraints in the face of sudden increases in demand, and labor shortages, have combined to negatively affect the availability of inputs and products worldwide. Higher freight ...
  • Download PDF
    Is rising inflation a global risk?
    Authors
    Abdelaaziz Ait Ali
    Uri Dadush
    November 2, 2021
    Mounting inflation in the major financial centers have raised concerns about the consequences on macroeconomic stability, including the Central Bank response they might trigger. In line with official views, we argue that inflation will probably wind down. We show that core inflation remains below pre-Covid levels in most large economies. We also argue that emerging markets are now less prone to “sudden stop” phenomena, in part because many have already started the exit from accommod ...
  • Largely inadequate to manage the challenges we face
    Authors
    Helmut Sorge
    November 2, 2021
    How close are we to the apocalypse, human culture, democracy, wisdom, thrown back in time and reduced to the mind of Neanderthals? Remember them, 40 000 years ago? Or back to the days of the dinosaurs, 233 million years gone by, yet unforgotten, thanks to Hollywood. Gone are the mammoths, the cave men, the pest and cholera and wars, which lasted 30 years. Compared with the devastation of the “black death”, a bubonic plague pandemic (1347 to 1353), which caused the death of up to 20 ...
  • Decarbonizing the economy: a view from the South
    Authors
    Rim Berahab
    November 2, 2021
    This article was initially published on globaldev.blog in English, French and Spanish. How can the world achieve higher levels of decarbonization without compromising economic development? This column explores the case of Morocco, a developing country committed to contributing to the global effort against climate change. Assessment of possible decarbonization pathways suggests that particular attention should be paid to expanded penetration of renewable energy to meet future electri ...
  • Download PDF
    Literature Paper: Jihadist Armed Governance in Mali
    Authors
    Rida Lyammouri
    November 2, 2021
    In the Sahel, and Central Mali in particular, the proliferation of armed groups over the past decade has resulted in formal and informal non-state governance structures. This paper assesses the various definitions and typologies associated with rebel and jihadist governance in order to better understand the mechanisms of governance provision used by key non-state governance providers in Central Mali.   ...
  • Le plaidoyer de l’Afrique pour le gaz naturel
    Authors
    Francis Perrin
    November 2, 2021
    Quelques jours avant le début de la COP 26 à Glasgow, en Ecosse, la Commission africaine de l’énergie (AFREC) (a) a voulu souligner que le gaz naturel pouvait jouer un rôle important dans le paysage énergétique africain. Le 25 octobre, l’AFREC a publié un communiqué de presse pour mettre en valeur une ‘’note d’orientation politique sur l’énergie’’ qui avait été achevée en juillet 2021. Le changement climatique est largement causé par la production et la consommation massive des éne ...
  • La femme marocaine dans le nouveau modèle de développement
    Nihal El Mquirmi & Abdessalam Jaldi
    November 01, 2021
    Bien que durant les vingt dernières années le Maroc a réalisé d’importants progrès au niveau de la législation dans la façon dont les femmes doivent être considérées, les mentalités réfra ...
  • The World’s Most Famous Political Prisoner
    Authors
    Helmut Sorge
    November 1, 2021
    Some of the golden Buddhas seemed to smile; many of the 2200 pagodas and temples surviving in the ancient city were fighting the damage of time and earthquakes. The road we took from historic Bagan to Mandalay, 178 kilometers away had more holes than a Swiss cheese, and the driver was as reluctant as a Trappist monk to answer my questions. When I noticed a group of destitute, drawn looking men, pale faces and hollow cheeks, cutting trees and moving giant rocks by hand towards trucks ...