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
    September 4, 2020
    South Africa shows that being food self-sufficient is a far cry from being food secure when poverty is extensive, the majority of people suffer from the “quadruple burden of disease”1 , the economy is highly unequal, and when improving the quality of the public health infrastructure remains a major challenge despite successive governments’ efforts. The major factors that undermine food security and health in South Africa are directly or indirectly due to the long history of social ...
  • Authors
    Mostafa Kheireddine
    September 4, 2020
    L’action publique urbaine dans le monde connait une métamorphose grâce à la montée en puissance du numérique dans la production et la gestion de la ville. Si le Maroc a franchi des étapes importantes dans la dématérialisation de certains services publics (impôts, cadastre, marchés publics, etc.), en revanche, d’autres secteurs peinent à suivre la même voie au moment où l’actuelle crise sanitaire de la Covid-19  vient rappeler l’urgence de la structuration de l’écosystème digital et ...
  • September 4, 2020
    The 2011 announcement of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam’s construction came at a critical time, as Egypt was in the midst of a revolution and relations between Egypt and Ethiopia were already tense. Despite initial Egyptian threats of undertaking military action, Ethiopia pursued the construction of what has been presented as an essential part of its national and, to some extent, regional development. Tensions between the Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia have been extremely high for t ...
  • Authors
    Salma Daoudi
    September 3, 2020
    Alors que la pandémie de la Covid-19 continue de sévir et d’alimenter nombre de turbulences politiques et économiques, un nouveau fléau s’abat sur le monde : Le nationalisme vaccinal. Témoin de la fragmentation de la santé publique mondiale et de l’effritement du multilatéralisme face au chaos sanitaire, le nationalisme vaccinal, soit la course aux droits prioritaires pour l’accaparement de doses à la production limitée, menace de politiser l’accès au vaccin. Outre les préoccupation ...
  • Authors
    September 3, 2020
    The “middle income trap” may well characterize the experience of Brazil and most of Latin America since the 1980s. Conversely, South Korea maintained its pace of evolution, reaching a high-income status. Such divergence of economic growth can be related to their distinctive performances of domestic accumulation of technological and organizational capabilities. Their different approaches to global value chains and trade globalization reinforced such discrepancy in domestic accumulati ...
  • Authors
    Sous la direction de
    September 3, 2020
    Au moment où elle fêtait le passage à 2020, l’Afrique était loin de soupçonner que l’année à laquelle elle faisait ses adieux, aurait le funeste “privilège” de porter dans ses registres d’Etat-civil, la naissance d’un virus qui allait paralyser le monde, dans la première moitié de l’année suivante. C’est sur cette Afrique de l’année pré-Covid-19 que portent les différents papiers du présent Rapport. Les uns, reflétant les espoirs, les ambitions et les projets africains et, les autre ...
  • Authors
    Taoufik Marrakchi
    September 2, 2020
    The crisis of the new Coronavirus is exacerbating the tensions between the United States and China, thus foreshadowing a war without guns, in which the stakes are neither territorial nor ideological, but economic. Having adopted a vehement attitude towards China, well before this crisis, the tenant of the White House has brandished the threat of economic sanctions against China and is pushing towards its isolation on the international scene in order to contain its influence. In cont ...
  • September 2, 2020
    The year 2020 is one of the most difficult years for the global automotive industry. The pandemic first appeared in a region of China known for its developed automotive sector. Initially, it was the South Asian manufacturers who first felt the impact of the shutdown in China before the pandemic shifted to Europe and the United States and before the disruption of value chains took on a global dimension. In Morocco, the sector has not remained immune to this turbulent context and its ...
  • Authors
    Amin El-Yousfi
    September 1, 2020
    On February 18, 2020, a few weeks before COVID-19 became the number one concern for politicians and the public, Emmanuel Macron delivered a long-awaited speech in Mulhouse in which he emphasized the importance of fighting what he called “Islamist separatism”. Many analysts were surprised by this declaration which differed from previous statements he’d made, following his election, about the need to institutionalize Islam. This policy brief explores the background to the institutiona ...
  • September 1, 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...