On Feb. 6-7, Mexico News Daily and Querencia hosted the “Future of Mexico Forum” at the Querencia Private Golf & Beach Club in Los Cabos, Baja California Sur. The forum brought together leaders from Mexico and the United States to discuss the future of Mexico across a diverse range of topics. As part of this Forum, the MND team conducted a series of exclusive interviews with each of the speakers and will be sharing the highlights with you in this series.
The second and third interviews we’re publishing are with Valeria Moy, the general director of public policy think tank the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness (IMCO), and Enrique Covarrubias, chief economist and head of research at the financial services company Actinver.
Moy, an economist, columnist and podcaster, has degrees from the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico and the London School of Economics and Political Science. She has appeared in the Forbes’ list of the “100 most powerful women in Mexico.”
Covarrubias, an economist, academic and contributor to media outlets such as Expansión and Investing.com, has a PhD in mathematics and economics from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and was a research scholar at the University of Oxford.
At the MND/Querencia “Future of Mexico Forum,” Valeria Moy and Enrique Covarrubias engaged in a conversation about a range of economic issues with Travis Bembenek, Mexico News Daily CEO and publisher.
After their “Mexico Economic Outlook: Challenges and Opportunities” discussion, Moy and Covarrubias spoke exclusively to Mexico News Daily, discussing Mexico’s near-term growth prospects and the federal government’s Plan México economic initiative, among other issues.
The outlook for the Mexican economy
A Bank of Mexico survey of 40 analysts conducted in late January found a consensus forecast of 1% GDP growth in Mexico this year.
Covarrubias told Mexico News Daily that Mexico faces “a very challenging environment for growth in the short term.”
“Even 1% starts to look a little bit optimistic,” he said, adding that there are “several reasons” for the less-than-rosy outlook.
One of them, Coavarrubias said, is that the recent changes of government in both Mexico and the United States have made it “challenging” to convince foreign investors that Mexico is the right place to invest right now.
Uncertainty about U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff intentions and the outcome of Mexico’s upcoming judicial elections is not conducive to investor confidence.
Covarrubias said that most investors “have decided it’s a wait-and-see environment” and therefore, foreign direct investment in Mexico is likely to be weak in 2025.
“It’s not only about foreign investment, it’s also about domestic investment, both private and public,” he added, explaining that Mexican companies need “more clarity” about the USMCA — which is up for review in 2026 — “before making massive investments.”
“… In terms of public investment, we’re definitely not going to see the same level of investment we saw in previous years,” largely due to a reduction in spending on infrastructure projects compared to the outlay during the López Obrador administration, Covarrubias said.
“… It’s more about finishing the things that have been started,” he said.
For her part, Valeria Moy said that public finances are currently so “stressed” that the federal government needs private investment to spur growth in Mexico.
If the recently proposed energy sector rules attract additional private investment “and provide at the same time better energy for the whole country,” economic growth “might be a little bit higher” than predicted in the near term, she said.
Valeria Moy on Plan México: ‘It’s good news to have some idea of where you want things to go’
The federal government last month presented Plan México, an ambitious economic initiative whose goals include making Mexico the 10th largest economy in the world, attracting additional private investment, reducing reliance on imports from China and creating 1.5 million new jobs over the next six years.
Moy described the plan as “industrial policy 101.”
“… It’s good news to have some idea of where you want things to go. Things might change of course, but at least in Plan México there are some ideas regarding social development, social infrastructure, changing the norms for electricity [and] changing water supply. So there are things that I do like about Plan México and I think that if it is well implemented, it might … in the medium and long run change some things,” for the better, she said.
“What it is lacking is funds. … That’s where the plan is not very solid,” Moy added.
‘A brilliant opportunity for the Mexican economy’
The trade tensions between the United States and China create “a brilliant opportunity for the Mexican economy,” Coavarrubias said because Chinese products could “suddenly” be blocked from entering the U.S.
The Trump administration has already imposed additional tariffs on Chinese imports, a move that angered Beijing and prompted retaliation.
U.S. protectionism targeting Chinese products “might force a lot of that production to be shifted toward Mexico, and it could finally generate some sectors where Mexico can be as competitive as China,” Covarrubias said.
“… American companies need to bet on Mexico as the place where this production is going to happen,” including by increasing their investment in Mexico, he added.
Covarrubias: 25% US tariffs would be ‘disastrous’ for Mexico, but are not likely
Covarrubias said that 25% tariffs on Mexican exports to the United States — as proposed by Trump but which are currently paused until early March — “would be disastrous for the Mexican economy.”
However, he noted that “whenever external shocks happen” — such as the imposition of tariffs on Mexican goods — the Mexican peso “tends to depreciate,” and thus Mexican exports become more competitive and labor costs decline for foreign companies operating in Mexico.
Still, Covarrubias sees a 25% tariff scenario as unlikely, “not only because it would hurt the Mexican economy, and I don’t think any country in the world wants its neighbor to suffer economic consequences of such actions, but also because those tariffs would impact directly American companies at a time when North America as a whole is trying to compete with many different Asian companies but in particular with Chinese companies.”
Moy: ‘We should be changing and adapting our educational models to a new world’
Moy told Mexico News Daily that economic prosperity depends heavily on high-quality education before criticizing Mexico’s system for its rigidity and resistance to change.
“We should be changing and adapting our educational models to a new world that has changed a lot,” she said.
Continuing her response to a question about the economic lessons Mexico can learn from other countries, Moy said that the Mexican government needs to learn how to invest public money more wisely.
During her participation in the economy session of the Future of Mexico Forum, the IMCO chief was critical of the previous federal government’s enormous outlay on infrastructure projects such as the Maya Train railroad and Pemex’s new refinery on the Tabasco coast.
Both Moy and Covarrubias spoke about the low fiscal multiplier effect generated by public spending on infrastructure projects given that the significant outlay hasn’t translated into higher economic growth for Mexico — at least not yet.
The US $20 billion Olmeca Refinery — which was officially inaugurated in 2022 but is still not operating at full capacity — is “a very good example of inefficient spending,” Moy said.
By Mexico News Daily chief staff writer Peter Davies ([email protected])
