Monday, On the Margin
Card transactions; housing prices; vehicles; Mexican exports; industrial activity; and foreigners.
Card transactions
Purchases with credit and debit cards rose by 17% year-over-year (YoY) during the first month of the year, generating over $520 billion pesos in processed volume during the month (+14% YoY).
Here are some things that stood out to us from the latest data:
Purchases of airline tickets rose by 42% YoY in terms of transactions. However, the purchase volume decreased by 4% — this meant that the average purchase decreased 32% from +$4,000 pesos to +$2,700.
Card transactions in parking spaces continues to be the highest growth category with a +71% rise year-over-year in purchase volume. However, this category only processed $113 million pesos during the month.
Payment aggregators such as Clip and Mercado Pago increased purchase volume by 25% YoY. They accounted for 6% of total purchase amounts and almost 10% of transactions in January (up 120 basis points when compared to 2023).
Card transactions in schools also posted notable increases of +27% YoY in terms of purchase volumes.
We recently did a deep dive on the private education industry in Mexico, and one on e-commerce; make sure to check them out!
Housing prices
According to the Sociedad Hipotecaria Federal (SHF), housing prices in Mexico increased by 8.7% YoY, as we continue to see some deceleration after double digit growth during most of 2022 and 2023.
Surprisingly, Tlaxcala recorded the highest overall increase in housing prices during 2024 — with an uptick of almost 20% year-over-year, according to the SHF.
Vehicle production
Light vehicle production recorded a modest 1.7% YoY rise during the first month of the year as the industry produced over 312,000 units.
Market leader’s performance varied. Nissan grew by 8% YoY, GM Motors fell by almost 11% YoY and Ford decreased production output by 5%.
Notable annual increases were seen in Toyota (+243%), Audi (+134%) and Kia (+54%) during the month.
The Japanese automaker produced more than 26,000 Tacoma trucks during the month across its plants in Baja California and Guanajuato.
…and sales
New light vehicle sales grew by 6% YoY and almost reached 120,000 units during January of this year.
According to INEGI, 4 Chinese brands sold more than 1,000 vehicles during the month: MG Motors (4,000), JAC (1,946), Great Wall Motors (1,333) and Chirey (1,179).
Exports
According to Banxico, foreign trade in Mexico grew close to 3% for both imports and exports — surpassing a total trade volume of more than $1,200 billion dollars during the year.
As of last year, the United States made up more than 83% of total Mexican exports. Only 3 other countries: Canada, China and Germany, accounted for more than 1% of total exports.
In the past 5 years the Mexican economy has found it hard to diversify across other major trading partners, with only exports to Singapore and Malaysia recording double-digit CAGRs in export volume.1
Furthermore, total exports to major economies such as: India, France, Italy, Chile and Colombia have actually decreased when compared to 2019.
Industrial activity
In December, the industrial activity indicator dropped by 2.4% year-over-year (YoY), compared to annual increases of 1.6% in the same month of 2023, and 5.1% in 20222.
Over the past year, construction activities declined by 7.1%, after experiencing double-digit growth in December 2023. Additionally, the mining sector continued to contract, with a 6.2% YoY decrease adding up to a 3.3% drop reported in 2023.
Notably, the utilities sector has not recovered, with production levels remaining well below those before the pandemic.
Tourism
According to SECTUR data, there were around 22.3 million international foreigner air arrivals during 2024, up 2% YoY — despite this setting a record high for the country, it marked a slowdown when compared to 6% increase achieved during 2023.
Interestingly, airports close to nearshoring hubs reported importan increases in foreign arrivals during the year. Most notably, in Querétaro (+52%), León (+19%) and Monterrey (+14%).
Despite the modest overall increase of 2%; we saw major upticks in foreign arrivals from Asian countries such as China, Hong Kong, and Singapore.
CAGR is the compound annual growth rate. Only countries with more than $500 million dollars in exports are considered for this statistic.
With seasonally adjusted figures.
Hola, la grafica Foreign Arrivals by Airport parece que están al reves algunos datos... Por ejemplo, para CUN 2024 10,042 de 2023 9,724 y en YOY reportan decremento.