Mexico & Nafta
These are boom times for maquiladoras. In August the number of new maquiladoras setting up in the country increased by 30% on August 2003. So far this year 800 companies have set up maquiladoras. This has taken the number of companies back up close to the 3,600 peak hit in 2001.
After three years of slow growth, the industry is picking up again, but the mix of companies setting up in Mexico has, according to maquiladora operators, changed dramatically. Companies setting up or expanding their maquiladora operations in Mexico are no longer attracted by the cheapness and docility of Mexico's unskilled labour. Now it is high-tech operations, such as aerospace, which are setting up in Mexico.
Recent times have been hard in the maquiladora belt, which lies mostly along the border with the US. According to maquiladora operators, between 2000 and 2003 the country lost 240,000 jobs because maquiladora operations were switched to China and Central America. Maquiladora operators claim that since the beginning of this year the trend has changed and that the industry has taken on around 200,000 workers. The official figures, however, show that only 81,000 have been hired. The companies expanding in Mexico are assembling products with a higher value-added content. This means, they claim, that the country has moved on from being a cheap-labour location.
Daniel Romo, chairman of the Consejo Nacional de la Industria Maquiladora, claims that companies left Mexico simply because labour costs in the country were too high. He said that they move to places such as China, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras and even Costa Rica, because labour costs were 50% lower in these places.
The government endorses Romo's view that the industry is changing but adds that in some cases Mexico has recaptured business that had moved elsewhere. Rocio Ruiz Chávez , the deputy trade and industry minister, said that her view was that some companies had come back to Mexico. She noted that the number of jobs in maquiladoras had increased by 7.7% between December 2003 and August 2004. Some maquiladora operators agree that Mexico has attracted companies back from China. No one was prepared to name names.
The industry, however, does not believe that things will get back to what they were. Ricardo Martínez, the head of the maquiladora development committee in Mexicali, in the border state of Baja California, said that there was little sign that big factories would be built in Mexico. Instead, he expects companies to set up smaller operations with better-qualified workers. There have been maquiladoras in Mexicali for the past 30 years. What is happening now, he said, is that companies producing higher value-added products are setting up in the city.