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The final piece of a historic set of laws known as the National Anti-Corruption System went into effect in Mexico on July 19, 2017. These laws seek to limit the ability of businesses and individuals to influence public officials for benefit or gain and are part of the federal government’s ongoing effort to level the playing field for all businesses in Mexico.
HOW MEXICO AND COMPARATOR ECONOMIES RANK ON THE EASE OF DOING BUSINESS
UNITED STATES (RANK 8) MEXICO (RANK 47)
COLOMBIA (RANK 53)
LATIN AMERICA & CARIBBEAN (REG. AVG.)
BRAZIL (RANK 123) INDIA (RANK 130)
82.45 72.29
70.92 58.75
56.53 55.27
The rankings are benchmarked to June 2016 and are based on the average of each economy’s distance to frontier (DTF) scores for the 10 topics included in this year’s aggregate ranking. The distance to frontier score benchmarks economies with respect to regulatory practice, showing the absolute distance to the best perfor- mance in each Doing Business indicator. An economy’s distance to frontier score is indicated on a scale from 0 to 100, where 0 represents the worst performance and 100 the frontier. For the economies for which the data cover 2 cities, scores are a population-weighted average for the 2 cities.
Source: World Bank Doing Business 2017
and borrowers as well as the widespread accessibility of credit information as reasons for ranking Mexico so highly. In the last two years, Mexico has instituted reforms to improve both its insolvency proceedings and companies’ access to credit.
INVESTING IN TRADE
Companies in Mexico have the advantage of being able to conduct business in a variety of foreign markets, and not just because of the nation’s proximity to the massive consumer market in the United States. Over the last quarter-century, Mexico has carefully and deliberately established 12 trading agreements with a total of 46 countries across the globe. While NAFTA remains the foremost of these pacts, Mexico has also established trade agreements with the European Union, al- most all of Central America, and such nations as Chile, Uru- guay, Colombia, Peru, Switzerland, Norway, Israel, and Japan.
The Mexican government has also strived to establish a competitive and business-friendly environment. From the half-century-old maquiladora program to last year’s creation of special economic zones, Mexico has a storied reputation of providing enticing incentives to foreign companies. And the provision of equal profit and dividend rights for foreign inves- tors, as well as the capability of majority ownership of domes- tic companies (when proper authorization is obtained), has given Mexico a substantial competitive advantage over most other economies in the Americas.
Unsurprisingly, foreign investors have flocked to Mexico in the 21st century to take advantage of all these favorable business conditions. About US$26.8 billion in foreign direct investment flowed into Mexico in 2016. Half of that invest- ment went to the Mexican manufacturing sector, with finan- cial services, telecommunication, and commerce combining for another 27.4 percent of the total. Although the majority of FDI
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