Mex­i­co is T&T’s eighth largest trad­ing part­ner and is as­pir­ing to be among the top five in the short term.

In an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian, Mex­i­co’s Am­bas­sador to T&T, Vic­tor Hugo Morales, said among crit­i­cal ar­eas of strength­en­ing will be trade, in­vest­ment and tourism.

He said while both coun­tries cur­rent­ly en­joy good re­la­tions, there is room for more growth, es­pe­cial­ly as T&T ex­ports more goods to that South Amer­i­can coun­try than Mex­i­co ex­ports to this coun­try.

He ex­plained that Caribbean coun­tries, such as T&T, are par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant as he al­so not­ed that this coun­try, as the lead­ing econ­o­my in the East­ern Caribbean, is a strate­gic part­ner.

Morales em­pha­sised that the com­mer­cial po­ten­tial of Mex­i­co’s ex­ports to T&T is there­fore, sig­nif­i­cant.

Of par­tic­u­lar in­ter­est is hav­ing cars man­u­fac­tured in Mex­i­co en­ter the lo­cal mar­ket.

Ac­cord­ing to Mex­i­co’s coun­try com­mer­cial guide, that coun­try is one of the lead­ing glob­al pas­sen­ger ve­hi­cle man­u­fac­tur­ers, pro­duc­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly three mil­lion ve­hi­cles an­nu­al­ly.

Nine­ty per cent of ve­hi­cles pro­duced in Mex­i­co are ex­port­ed, with 76 per cent des­tined for the Unit­ed States.

Es­tab­lished au­tomak­ers in Mex­i­co in­clude Au­di, Ba­ic Group, BMW, Stel­lan­tis (made up of FCA and PSA Group), Ford, Gen­er­al Mo­tors, Hon­da, Hyundai, Jac by Gi­ant Mo­tors, Kia, Maz­da, Mer­cedes Benz, Nis­san, Toy­ota, and Volk­swa­gen.

“We have a very strong man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor main­ly in au­to­mo­bile cars. We are the fourth largest ex­porter around the world in the car sec­tor so there is the pos­si­bil­i­ty to sell Mex­i­can cars here (in T&T) as we need to open new mar­kets,” Morales added.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Morales said, this sec­tor will be fur­ther boost­ed as sev­er­al projects have been an­nounced in north­ern Mex­i­co: in­clud­ing a US$10 bil­lion Tes­la in­vest­ment in Mon­ter­rey, Mex­i­co’s third largest city and cap­i­tal city of the state of Nue­vo Leon, as well as in­vest­ments from Gen­er­al Mo­tors, Ford and JAC.

Elec­tro­mo­bil­i­ty has be­come a key fea­ture of Mex­i­co’s in­dus­tri­al trans­for­ma­tion as Morales not­ed that its au­to­mo­tive in­dus­try is tran­si­tion­ing to a more sus­tain­able busi­ness mod­el.

Elec­tro­mo­bil­i­ty is de­fined as the use of elec­tric ve­hi­cles and refers to all types of ve­hi­cles (from bi­cy­cles to high-speed trains).

Dur­ing the COP-27 meet­ing held in Egypt in No­vem­ber 2022, Mex­i­co an­nounced an in­crease in the emis­sions re­duc­tion tar­get from 22 per cent to 35 per cent by 2030.

The am­bas­sador al­so high­light­ed some key fea­tures about his coun­try not­ing that in 2022, Mex­i­co at­tract­ed US$35.292 bil­lion of for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment, an in­crease of 12 per cent com­pared to 2021.

Eighty-six per cent of in­vest­ments are cen­tred on ten in­dus­tries: au­to­mo­tive sec­tor, nat­ur­al gas trans­porta­tion, oil ex­trac­tion, au­to parts man­u­fac­tur­ing, e-com­merce, iron and steel in­dus­try, food and bev­er­age sec­tor, fer­tilis­ers and re­al es­tate.

Re­gard­ing trade, he said op­por­tu­ni­ties for T&T can in­clude tele­vi­sion re­ceivers, da­ta pro­cess­ing ma­chines, ma­chin­ery, elec­tron­ic equip­ment, food and bev­er­ages (in­clud­ing al­co­holic bev­er­ages) and even veg­eta­bles.

Morales said there is much scope for more Mex­i­can im­ports to T&T, as­sur­ing that based on its sol­id in­fra­struc­ture and ex­pe­ri­ence, his coun­try can meet the de­mands of the Trinida­di­an mar­ket in an ef­fi­cient and com­pet­i­tive man­ner.

“We al­so need to in­crease ex­ports in bev­er­ages like tequi­la, but we are al­so one of the main beer ex­porters in the world. We ex­port more beer than the US and Ger­many,” he added.

To­day, Mex­i­co ships out more than twice as much beer as any oth­er coun­try and sin­gle-hand­ed­ly ac­counts for 30 per cent of the world’s en­tire ex­port-beer mar­ket, ac­cord­ing to Gene­va-based trade sta­tis­tics provider Trade Da­ta Mon­i­tor.

Mex­i­can prod­ucts ex­port­ed to T&T in­clude ma­chine tools, plas­tics and as­so­ci­at­ed prod­ucts, pa­per and card­board and var­i­ous food in­gre­di­ents.

Prod­ucts im­port­ed from T&T in­clude am­mo­nia, urea and methanol.

To fur­ther fos­ter trade with this coun­try Mex­i­co will be par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Trade and In­vest­ment Con­ven­tion host­ed by the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion which will take place at the end of this month.

Last year, Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon held a work meet­ing with Morales to de­fine a roadmap to in­crease trade and in­vest­ment be­tween both coun­tries.

Both coun­tries al­so agreed that agri­cul­tur­al prod­ucts and man­u­fac­tured goods, as well as in­dus­tri­al ser­vices, have the po­ten­tial to in­crease cur­rent trade.

A Mex­i­can trade mis­sion to T&T was al­so held in ear­ly Sep­tem­ber 2022 as a con­crete ac­tion to strength­en the busi­ness ties be­tween both na­tions.

Mex­i­co is al­so a strong ac­tor in tourism.

In 2022, 40 mil­lion in­ter­na­tion­al tourists ar­rived in Mex­i­co, 20 per cent more than in 2021 while in 2022, for­eign ex­change earn­ings from tourism amount­ed to US$28.16 bil­lion, ac­cord­ing to sta­tis­tics pro­vid­ed by the Mex­i­can Em­bassy, which al­so not­ed that Mex­i­co ranks sixth in in­ter­na­tion­al tourism.

Cit­ing that Mex­i­co has much to of­fer apart from Can­cun, Morales said there are a host of oth­er spots such as the Mayan ru­ins.

There’s al­so Monte Al­ban or White Moun­tain, which was once the an­cient cap­i­tal of the Za­potec peo­ple.

Over­look­ing the Val­ley of Oax­a­ca, Monte Al­ban is one of the top ar­chae­o­log­i­cal sites in Mex­i­co. In ad­di­tion to spec­tac­u­lar views over the val­ley, vis­i­tors will be able to see the ru­ined build­ings around a broad, flat hill­top ter­race, the Gran Plaza, that runs north to south.

Mex­i­co al­so con­tin­ues to make strides in nearshoring; where a busi­ness moves its op­er­a­tions to a near­by coun­try from one of greater dis­tance.

“This is re­al­ly trans­form­ing the Mex­i­can econ­o­my. We are re­ceiv­ing a lot of for­eign in­vest­ment. Last year we re­ceived US$35 bil­lion from this on­ly.

“With the geopo­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion glob­al­ly many ac­tors are see­ing it is bet­ter to fo­cus in the near mar­ket and Mex­i­co is so close to the US. Chi­nese fac­to­ries are ar­riv­ing in Mex­i­co be­cause Chi­na is so far from the US,” Morales added.