Mexico's Exports Registered a New Record in 2010

Export record mark in 2010
January 25, 2011 - 23:51Credit:Roberto Morales / The Economist

Mexico's exports registered a new record total of $ 298.362 million in 2010, an increase of 1.9% over the figure achieved in 2008, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography.

Compared with 2009, the annualized growth rate of exports was 29.8 percent. In 2010, imports totaled U.S. $ 301.482 million, an annual increase of 28.6%, so a deficit of 3.121 million.

Imports and could not beat the record, also achieved in 2008, to 310.132 million dollars.

The different behavior due to external purchases benefited from that recorded a recovery in international markets, especially the U.S. market that Mexico leads the country to 80% of total exports, while imports showed the lower relative growth demand for the domestic economy.

Car exports boost foreign sales

Manufacturing sales grew an annual 29.5% in 2010, settling at U.S. $ 245.745 million. Of this amount, 26% were exports of the automotive industry, which had a record 64.948 million dollars.

In 2010, shipments from the U.S. auto industry increased by 51.8%, while the rest of the world the increase was 63.7 percent.

Oil exports amounted to 41.682 million dollars, 34.8% more, but remained below its pre-crisis level, when they were U.S. $ 50.635 million in 2008.

More shopping for consumption

Imports of consumer goods rose 26.2%, intermediate goods, 34.5% and capital goods fell 1.3 percent.

December 2010 only considering the value of merchandise exports was 26.901 million U.S. dollars, 16.4% higher than in the same month of 2009. This rate was derived from increases of 14.9% in non-oil exports and 25.6% in the oil.

In turn, the increase in non-oil growth originated from 12.2% in non-oil exports directed to the U.S. market and 25.3% in pipelined to the world.

Exports of manufactured goods recorded in December last year an annual increase of 15.1 percent. The most significant changes were seen in exports of food, beverages and snuff (26.5%), steel products (23.7%) of minerometalurgia products (58.3%) and machinery and equipment industry (32.2 per percent).