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

  • The Thirsty Planet, and No End in Sight (I)
    Authors
    Helmut Sorge
    August 16, 2019
    Earlier this month, the World Resources Institute based in Washington D.C. revealed that 17 countries, home to one-quarter of the world's population, are facing extremely high water stress. Below is an international press review of the global water crisis by Helmut Sorge, former Foreign editor, and Middle East expert for Germany's leading newsmagazine "Der Spiegel", and columnist at the Policy Center for the New South.    “A QUARTER OF THE WORLD IS FACING A LOOMING WATER CRISIS” “ ...
  • Trump's Backfiring Trade Policy
    Authors
    Uri Dadush
    Laurence Kotlikoff
    August 15, 2019
    Thirty months into President Trump's radical trade policy, it is time to take stock. American firms tend to give the President the benefit of the doubt - that the aim is not protection (which most don't want) but opening up markets overseas, striking better trade deals, and reducing the nation's big trade deficit. So far, however, none of this has happened. Instead, there is virulent uncertainty, barriers against American firms are going up, Europe, Japan and China have struck impor ...
  • Download PDF
    Solar smart grid as a path to economic inclusion and adaptation to climate change in the Brazilian Semiarid Northeast
    Authors
    Paulo Nobre
    Enio Bueno Pereira
    Francinete Francis Lacerda
    Marcel Bursztyn
    Eduardo Amaral Haddad
    Debora Ley
    August 12, 2019
    Purpose This study aims to exploit the abundance of solar energy resources for socioeconomic development in the semi -arid Northeastern Brazil as a potent adaptation tool to global climate change. It points out a set of conjuncture factors that allow us to foresee a new paradigm of sustainable development for the region by transforming the sun’s radiant energy into electricity through distributed photovoltaic generation. The new paradigm, as presented in this essay, has the transfo ...
  • Download PDF
    Can African countries learn from the Chinese Development Model?
    Authors
    Ihssane Guennoun
    August 9, 2019
    China’s economic records over the past four decades generated the intellectual curiosity of many foreign observers and researchers . The development pathway of Beijing is interesting to study as it proves that a country can take its destiny in its own hand. This paper tries to draw possible lessons from the Chinese development path to see if some of them could be adaptable to feed the development of the African countries. Introduction Forty years ago, China opened up its economy t ...
  • “A group of people roughly the size of a decent football crowd”
    Authors
    Helmut Sorge
    August 9, 2019
    The bells of Big Ben are silent. No toll, no sound, for two years of restoration. Big Ben is a symbol of British parliament and democracy –the Palace of Westminster. The bells may not toll, but the clock is ticking, running forward above the heads of  Britain’s parliamentarians, who are facing history and turmoil and even the dispersing of their parties, in power for centuries. Time is running out. The no deal Brexit, possible on October 31, is creeping up on the United Kingdom like ...
  • Download PDF
    2009-2018 : Les dix derniers Prix Nobel d’économie « dix-neuf lauréats »
    Authors
    Henri-Louis Vedie
    August 8, 2019
    Contrairement aux autres Prix Nobel /physique, médecine, etc…/ le Prix Nobel d’Economie n’est pas attaché au testament d’Alfred Nobel, mais à un don de la Banque de Suède. C’est désormais, un Prix Nobel comme les autres, même si les premiers lauréats datent de 1969 / Ragnar Frisch et Jan Tinbergen/. Depuis, 49 autres prix ont été décernés. Au total, en 50 ans, ce sont 81 lauréat(e)s qui ont été ainsi distingués. On trouvera en annexe 1 la liste chronologique des lauréat(e)s et en an ...
  • Brazil must hold to structural reforms while undergoing slow economic recovery
    Authors
    Otaviano Canuto
    August 8, 2019
    Brazil's economic recovery after the deep 2015-16 recession has been the slowest on record, with GDP per capita last year remaining more than 9% below its pre-crisis peak (Chart 1, right side). The IMF's annual report on the country's economy, released two weeks ago, estimated current GDP to be nearly 4% below its potential level, which suggests insufficiency of aggregate demand (Chart 1, left side). On the other hand, as the slow recovery reflects structural factors, it is necessar ...
  • Europe-Afrique : It’s A Match !
    Authors
    Mahaut de Fougières
    August 6, 2019
    L'auteur est une alumni du programme des Atlantic Dialogues Emerging Leaders. Seuls 14 kilomètres séparent les continents africain et européen. C'est un fait: nous sommes voisins ! Outre cette proximité géographique, l’Europe et l’Afrique sont liées par une histoire commune, des relations économiques, des échanges diplomatiques et de nombreux défis communs. Une véritable communauté de destin qui appelle à un partenariat fort, alors que l’Accord de Cotonou, qui régit les relations p ...
  • Space war: From the moon towards infinity
    Authors
    Helmut Sorge
    August 5, 2019
    The moon and space exploration are tempting more nations than ever. Global powers are preparing for possible space war. The visions of science fiction writers are approaching reality… “THAT BRIGHT LOVELINESS IN THE ETERNAL COLD” The moon was mysterious, the man on the moon an extravagant imagination, unreachable except in our fanciful mental images, or the make believe of science fiction authors. One day in December anno 1968, three men orbited the moon, really did, 240 000 miles ...
  • The Role of the African Diaspora in Moving Africa Forward
    Authors
    Tosin Durotoye
    July 31, 2019
    Tosin Durotoye is an alumna of the Atlantic Dialogues Emerging Leaders Program 2018.  On an unremarkable day in 2015, I woke up and decided it was time to move back home. At the time, “home” was the United States where I’d spent my formative years and lived for over 20 years. However, my birth home – the home at the core of my identity and the home I would be returning to - was Nigeria. My family had immigrated to the U.S. during the Abacha era – a time of great social and politic ...