Mexico‘s industry registered a 3.5% year-on-year growth in July 2022, driving a 2.2% rise in the Global Indicator of Economic Activity, Inegi reported Monday.

With this, industry offset a 2.7% drop in primary activities, while tertiary activities had a 1.7% increase.

These indicators consider 2013 as the base year and seasonally adjusted figures, which allow neutralizing seasonal and calendar factors. Their analysis helps to make a better diagnosis of the evolution of the variables.

At a month-on-month rate, the IGAE increased 0.4 percent, broken down as follows: primary activities (+0.8 percent), secondary activities (+0.4 percent) and tertiary activities (+0.4 percent).

Mexico’s industry

In particular, secondary activities correspond to the sectors dedicated to the mining, manufacturing, construction and electricity industries.

The IGAE does not include the forestry, fishing, hunting and trapping subsectors, nor all tertiary activities, so their growth rate may differ from that of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Mexico is the largest Spanish-speaking country in the world and its $1.29 trillion economy is the second largest in Latin America.

Mexico also remains an upper-middle income member of the G-20 and the OECD, with a GDP per capita of $10,040.

However, Mexico’s average annual GDP growth rate of 2.0% since 1993 has been slower than most emerging markets, due in part to its high rates of labor informality (56%), poverty (44%) and declining oil production.

In addition, the country’s economy was hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic, lockouts and accompanying economic contractions around the world.

According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Mexico’s real GDP growth rate for 2020 was -8.5%, rebounding to 4.8% in 2021.

The IMF forecasts that Mexico will achieve GDP growth of 2% in 2022, provided that the public health situation continues to improve and other external factors such as inflation and supply chain disruptions remain manageable.