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
    Les Pays Pétroliers Africains sous la Menace du Covid-19 : Enjeux Economiques et Pistes pour Sortir de L'impasse
    Authors
    Rim Berahab
    April 27, 2020
    Les pays africains riches en pétrole sont confrontés, à la fois au choc de la pandémie de Covid-19 et à l’effondrement des prix du pétrole, ce qui les expose à de nombreuses vulnérabilités. La situation est d’autant plus alarmante, vu que la plupart de ces pays ne se sont pas encore remis du choc pétrolier de 2014. Cette nouvelle crise aggrave, donc, une situation économique déjà difficile. Les termes de l’échange de ces pays risquent, ainsi, de se détériorer, entraînant une réducti ...
  • Coronavirus Spreads Climate Hope : Lessons from Washington state
    Authors
    Jordan Kronen
    April 27, 2020
    We are embroiled in a global emergency that we, as a species, have not previously experienced. This menace is responsible for massive numbers of premature deaths and, if left untreated, could forever threaten our global security. Misinformation about the cause and how best to address it, has been pervasive. If you thought I was referring to COVID-19, you would be wrong. Rather, I am speaking about something far more destructive: climate change. The World Health Organization (WHO) h ...
  • Download PDF
    Coronavirus and climate: learning from France
    Authors
    Oumayma Bourhriba
    Uri Dadush
    April 24, 2020
    Policymakers across the world face a dilemma: to lockdown the economy, and see output and employment collapse, or to open and face a surge of COVID-19 infections and deaths that could overwhelm the medical system? The choice is especially stark in poor countries, where many depend on what they earn day to day, and where the medical system is entirely unequipped to deal with the virus. In this brief we assess the likely path and geographic spread of the epidemic. We do so by examinin ...
  • Download PDF
    Coronavirus et climat : Tirer les leçons du cas français
    Authors
    Oumayma Bourhriba
    Uri Dadush
    April 24, 2020
    Les décideurs politiques du monde entier sont confrontés à un dilemme : confiner l’économie et voir la production et l’emploi s’effondrer, ou ouvrir et faire face à une recrudescence des infections et des décès dus au COVID 19 qui submergent le système médical ? Le choix est particulièrement difficile dans les pays pauvres, où beaucoup dépendent de ce qu’ils gagnent au jour le jour et où le système médical n’est pas du tout équipé pour faire face au virus. Dans ce brief, nous souhai ...
  • La Banque africaine de développement se mobilise face au coronavirus
    Authors
    Leila Farah Mokaddem
    April 24, 2020
    Alors que les pays africains semblaient être épargnés par le coronavirus en début de crise, il apparait clairement aujourd’hui que ces derniers souffriront également des retombées négatives de cette pandémie. Compte tenu du nombre de cas relativement bas en comparaison avec les autres régions du monde, les systèmes de santé ne sont pas encore soumis à la pression observée ailleurs mais cela ne saurait tarder. Cependant, les effets négatifs sur l’économie sont eux déjà largement per ...
  • Water content in trade: a regional analysis for Morocco
    Authors
    Eduardo Amaral Haddad
    Vinicius A. Vale
    April 24, 2020
    This paper aims at evaluating the virtual water content in trade in an intra-country perspective and discussing potential tradeoffs between the use of natural resources and value added creation. We develop a trade-based index that reveals the relative water use intensities associated with specific interregional and international trade flows. The index is calculated considering the measures of water and value added embedded in trade flows associated with each regional origin-destinat ...
  • Download PDF
    Decolonizing the African University
    Authors
    Hisham Aidi
    April 24, 2020
    This Policy Brief looks at successive attempts to transform the African university, in initiatives that have alternately been termed part of a larger Africanization or decolonization project. We chart attempts at intellectual decolonization launched by African-born scholars such as Ali Mazrui and Samir Amin, as well as scholars from the African diaspora, including W.E.B. Du Bois and Walter Rodney. We will examine decolonization projects as launched in Makerere University and the Uni ...
  • Download PDF
    Globalization and the Covid-19 Pandemic: How is Africa’s Economy Impacted?
    Authors
    Seleman Yusuph Kitenge
    April 24, 2020
    Globalization has major linkages to the spread of diseases. This paper analyses the link between globalization and the COVID-19 pandemic and provides an overview of how Africa’s economy is being impacted by this new disease. It highlights the impacts on GDP growth and economic sectors. It provides recommendations of what should be done by African governments to address the problem. It concludes by calling on African governments to consider the socio-economic circumstances of their p ...
  • Download PDF
    Crisis Control: the Use of Simulations for Policy Decisionmaking
    Authors
    Eduardo Amaral Haddad
    Karina Bugarin
    April 24, 2020
    In face of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, use of evidence may be key to timely and precise decision-making. This policy brief explores the use of simulations in policy decisionmaking in the Brazilian State of São Paulo in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. We draw briefly on the literature on evidence-based public policy to highlight the exacerbated need for timely decision-making and the role evidence plays in guiding high-level decisionmakers amidst a crisis. We present examples of ...
  • The United States: Poverty, Race, and Healthcare in the Face of COVID-19
    Authors
    Naakoshie Mills
    April 24, 2020
    The Coronavirus’ ugly and fierce spread throughout the world underscores the limitations of health infrastructure and shortcomings in public health administration. What’s more troubling, is the pandemic’s especially pernicious effects on vulnerable populations in the United States—ethnic and racial minorities, disabled persons, women, the elderly, and impoverished communities. The virus knows no boundaries and, yet, structural inequality makes it all the more terrifying for marginal ...