Weekly Report - 17 January 2006

MEXICO | Fixed investment still growing at brisk pace. In the first 10 months of 2005, gross fixed investment was up 7.3% on the same period of 2004. Most of the push came from investment in machinery and equipment, which rose by 11.4%; investment in construction - one of the biggest employers - rose by only 2.8%. Though this pattern of increased fixed investment is usually taken to foreshadow increased output, this has not been the result recently in Mexico. In 2004 gross fixed investment grew by 7.5%, GDP by 4.4%. In 2005, GDP grew by an estimated 3.5%.