The United States, Canada, Brazil, and Mexico have the largest economies in the Americas. However, while the US government gave stimulus equivalent to 12% of its GDP, the Mexican authorities only allocated a little more than 1%.
(MEXICO CITY – ).- Mexico has one of the three largest economies that are lagging the most due to the pandemic, the lack of government support, the stagnation of investment, inflation and the fall of the automotive industry, analysts say.
The Mexican economy is going to grow 2.8% in 2022, after rebounding 5.3% in 2021 and collapsing 8.2% in 2020, according to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) estimated by the International Monetary Fund.
In other words, the national economy will not recover this year the level of 2019, prior to the health crisis.
Of the 30 countries with the largest economies in the world, only Spain and Thailand are in a similar situation to Mexico, as the global economy as a whole has recovered from the pandemic since last year.
After entering the Great Lockdown, the world economy suffered in 2020 the worst recession since the Great Depression more than nine decades ago.
However, the productive collapse was different for each country, due to the structure of their economies and the different policies used to mitigate the negative consequences of the pandemic on the income of households and companies.
“The pandemic set the whole world back in 2020, but the collapse in Mexico was deeper due to the lack of fiscal stimulus, so the economy received the direct impact of COVID-19 and it will take longer to recover the level it had before the crisis”, said Luis Muñiz, deputy director of analysis at Vector Casa de Bolsa.
In Canada, support represented more than 4% and in Brazil almost 8%, according to IMF figures.
“What worries Mexico the most today is the growth of the economy, which possibly fell into recession in the second half of 2021, so it should not be surprising that GDP has not managed to recover the level of 2019 this year,” Muniz opined.
Behind the recession, he explained, is the double-digit drop in automotive production since last August, due to the lack of supplies, which weighed down the manufacturing sector and contaminated the entire economy.
TYT Newsroom