Mexico, with the potential to be the tenth economy in the world: BBVA

Mexico City. The country has enough potential to be the tenth most important economy in the world, said Eduardo Osuna Osuna, vice president and general director of BBVA México, the bank with the greatest presence among those operating in the country.

For this to happen and for activity growth to exceed the 2 percent annual threshold, said the banker, it is necessary to increase investment as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and carry out a series of actions that would give a complete boost to the economy.

“Mexico has a huge, huge opportunity, and when we try to quantify it and see how big the opportunity is, it is going from being the 13th economy currently, to being the 10th economy in the world (by 2050), and what there is what to do is overdiagnosed.

“The main challenge that we have to achieve in Mexico is to have 25 percent of public and private investment with respect to GDP, the country has not achieved this for a long time… we have talked a lot about nearshoringbut national private investment is between 10 and 11 times the total of Foreign Investment,” said Osuna Osuna.

When participating in the second day of activities of the National Meeting of Regional Advisors 2024 of BBVA Mexico, he specified that reaching 25 percent of investment as a percentage of GDP is the minimum required “to be able to break the inertia of this country to grow.” at 2 percent, if we do not achieve that, there is no way to grow beyond 2 percent in a sustained manner.”

He explained that this will be possible if the country solves a series of problems that have been faced for several years, such as promoting renewable energies and improving water management because “when we talk about the main bottleneck that exists in the country in Right now this issue is one of those, they are projects that take years to execute and not only foreign businessmen require cheap energy, but also national ones.”

At the same time, he pointed out, it is necessary to promote public-private partnerships; detonate infrastructure projects, especially in logistics; combat informality and cash management; promote education and the development of human capital; advance security and the rule of law, and promote the labor inclusion of women.

“If we do these seven things, Mexico will transform in a very important way and we can reach that 25 percent that breaks 2 percent of inertial growth and moves us from the number 13 economy to the number 10 economy in the country,” he insisted.

Osuna Osuna indicated that wage competitiveness must be improved to boost domestic consumption, which in recent years has been the main engine of economic growth, as well as reduce inequality, by further increasing the minimum wage, as it has done the current administration.

He considered it essential to “win the race” in attracting foreign investment as a result of the phenomenon of company relocation, better known as nearshoringbecause although Mexico today is the main trading partner of the United States, there are nations like Vietnam, Taiwan and South Korea that also seek to take advantage of it.