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

May 30, 2024

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

  • Authors
    June 19, 2020
    Alors que de nombreux Etats adoptent des mesures strictes appelant au confinement et allant jusqu’à la fermeture des frontières, certains pays ont eu recours aux technologies de surveillance afin de contrôler la propagation du virus, alors que d’autres se penchent sur des solutions similaires. Le dispositif le plus répandu est la géolocalisation des données smartphones, le traçage numérique, la cyber-surveillance et la reconnaissance faciale, dont l’objectif consiste à détecter les ...
  • Authors
    Moulay Omar Mharzi
    June 19, 2020
    À l’heure actuelle, l’humanité baigne dans une crise profonde dont la portée est universelle. Le constat est sans appel : la pandémie Covid-19 a enclenché une panique immense impliquant l’ordre social, les structures économiques et politiques, pour ne citer que ces aspects. S’agissant du volet politique, il est évident que les incidences de cette pandémie traversent aisément les frontières. En ce sens, une question se pose immanquablement : quel est l’impact de la crise sanitaire su ...
  • Authors
    Abdessalam Jaldi
    June 17, 2020
    L’existence du droit à la santé dans l’ordre juridique international ne fait pas de doute, vu sa reconnaissance pragmatique dans les systèmes internationaux et régionaux de protection des droits de l’homme. Cependant, l’affirmation de ce droit n’implique pas stricto sensu son effectivité, compte tenu de l’ambiguïté juridique qui caractérise sa nature juridique conséquente à sa double connotation à la fois civile et sociale. Le renouveau de la réflexion sur les problématiques inhéren ...
  • June 16, 2020
    بعد تفشي فيروس كورونا المستجد في جل مناطق العالم، اختلفت طرق التصدي له من دولة إلى أخرى. حيث اعتمدت الدول قرارات متفاوتة من حيث الصرامة في ظل الحد من تفشي هذا الوباء. وفي نفس الصدد، اتُخذت عدة قرارات لدعم المواطنين لكي يتاح لهم المرور من هذه الأزمة بأقل الأضرار الممكنة في مختلف القطاعات...
  • Authors
    June 16, 2020
    In times of shadow and despair, populists and authoritarians move in to undermine free speech and democracy. For authoritarian-minded leaders, wrote Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, writing in the New York Review of Books, “the coronavirus crisis is offering a convenient pretext to silence critics and consolidate power. Censorship in China and elsewhere has fed the pandemic, helping to turn a potentially containable threat into a global calamity. The health cr ...
  • Authors
    June 16, 2020
    La nature indispensable du transport aérien dans la conduite de la diplomatie et des affaires, la croissance de l’économie et le développement du commerce, fait que ce secteur est aujourd’hui sous le feu des projecteurs. Bien que ce ne soit pas la première crise traversée par le secteur aérien, elle reste sans conteste celle qui a engendré le plus de dégâts en un laps de temps relativement court. Il est vrai que les industries de l’aérien et du tourisme ont toutes deux déjà été mise ...
  • Authors
    June 15, 2020
    La Covid-19, menace conjoncturelle en dépit des impacts néfastes attendus, ne doit pas nous détourner complètement de menaces en phase de devenir structurelles et menacer toute une région dans son existence. Le terrorisme au Sahel et dans la région du Lac Tchad s’est avéré résilient face aux efforts jusqu’à présent déployés. Non seulement il n’a pas été vaincu au Sahel mais il avance vers son objectif final : atteindre l’Atlantique à travers les pays côtiers de l’Afrique de l’Ouest. ...
  • Authors
    Nouha Benjelloun Andaloussi
    June 13, 2020
    South Korea’s history of rapid industrialization and its long-standing alliance with the United States have shaped national state logic to a large extent around a desire to strictly comply with the common norms for aid in the international community, and to affirm itself as a large conventional donor, often at odds with attempts to introduce a more innovative image of South Korea by designing unique Official Development Assistance (ODA) models to be implemented in developing countri ...
  • Authors
    June 12, 2020
    The United States has suffered more COVID-19 casualties than any other country and continues to report large numbers of new cases and deaths, and – as evident recently in stock markets – investors remain extremely sensitive to the epidemic’s shifting trends. As every state reopens, including most recently the New York epicenter, the fates of the American economy and of the global economy depend on whether the United States has put the worst of the epidemic behind it, or whether it w ...