Mexican Market, Market of Mexico

Mexican Market encompasses the market structure of the country of Mexico, the fifth-largest country in the Americas and the fourteenth-largest in the world. It is the 11th most populous country in the world and the largest Spanish-speaking country in the world. As the only Latin-American member of the Organization foe Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries since 1994, Mexico is categorized as an upper middle-income country and is characterized by a free market economic structure. According to the Index of Economic Freedom for 2007, the country is said to be 65.8 % free. Mexico is one of the most open economies in the world with almost 90% of trade under various free trade agreements with over 40 countries. The major free trade agreements are the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and trade agreements with the European Union, Japan, Israel and many countries in Central and South America. USA and Canada remain its major trading partners.

Mexico has the highest per capita income in nominal terms in Latin America and is the twelfth-largest economy in the whole world when measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP). Structural changes in the economy happened after the 1994 economic debacle, since which Mexico has made a recovery to build modern and diversified economy. Some of the infrastructural sectors such as seaports, railroads, telecommunications, natural gas distribution, electricity generation and airports have been opened to private competition. Mexico enjoys high levels of business freedom, fiscal freedom, and trade freedom, freedom from government, property rights and monetary freedom and freedom for labour. Increase in the purchasing power of the middle class has been attributed to macroeconomic stability which saw the GDP annual average growth for the period 1995-2002 at 5.1%. Low inflation rates at 3.3% in 2005 have also credit consumption in the middle class. Some of the other remarkable performances of the country which form an important facet of its recovery include reduction of extreme poverty from 24.2% to 17.6% in the general population and from 42% to 27.9% in rural areas from 2000-2004. But some of the glaring problems concomitant with the speedy growth of the country are the discrepancies in income between the rich and poor as well as between peoples residing in the industrial north and the southern agricultural states as well as underemployment. There also exist huge differences in the Human Development Index (HDI) between many Mexican states.

Some of the features of the Mexican Market would include:

Money and Capital Market: in the sphere of the money and capital market, recent surveys have shown that the corporate bond market is not an important source of funding for most of the Mexican corporations. The corporate bond market is highly segmented and there is no central market for corporate bonds and each brokerage house tends to distribute its own products to its selective clientele. One of the major worries for the Bank of Mexico, the central bank of the country is that the monetary base has grown to such an extent that inflation rates appear unceasing. The Mexican Stock Exchange (Bolsa Mexicana de Valores) is a private institution that is governed by the Mexican Securities Market Act. It has approximately 250 issuers of paper and 40 companies are actively traded.

Commodities market: one of the major produces of Mexico is its fisheries. The main fishery products include Tuna, Shrimp and Groundfish.

Labour Market: The Mexican labour market is characterized by two dramatic features-a large force of informal workers defined as workers in firms with less than six employees who do not enjoy any labour protections and labour for formal jobs. Roughly 25% of the workforce is self-employed or owners of small firms, 13% are salaried workers in these firms and 9% work by contract or on a piecemeal basis with all the three categories outside the ambit labour benefits.