According to Expansión, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) projects Mexico to grow 1.9% in 2027, below the regional average of 2.5%. The Economic Survey of Latin America and the Caribbean 2026, presented on August 20, estimates 1.3% growth for the Mexican economy this year, compared to 2.2% for the region.
This diagnosis follows a period in which the Mexican economy grew 0.5% in 2025 and 1.5% in 2024, figures ECLAC places below the Latin American average. ECLAC also noted that the region grew at just 0.9% annually between 2014 and 2023. El Universal reports that ECLAC Executive Secretary José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs identified the primary constraint on regional growth as structural: low investment levels, limited productivity gains, and pervasive labor informality. ECLAC anticipates Mexico will remain below the regional average for the next two years. In Mexico, informality accounts for more than half of the employed population.
To put the contrast in perspective, ECLAC projects Brazil to grow 2.2% this year, against the 1.3% estimated for Mexico. The forecast places Mexico among the major Latin American economies with the weakest expected expansion. ECLAC warns that low growth can become a self-reinforcing trap: it limits the capacity to create formal businesses and jobs, and a highly informal economy struggles to absorb financing and technology. 'To escape the low-growth-capacity trap, we need to raise investment and productivity while simultaneously advancing toward productive formalization,' Salazar-Xirinachs said at the study's presentation. ECLAC identifies productive formalization, not merely labor formalization, as one of the necessary conditions for recovering higher growth rates.
The forecast arrives as the Finance Ministry (Secretaría de Hacienda) finalizes the assumptions underlying the 2027 Economic Package, in which the growth figure anchors revenue and public expenditure projections. ECLAC's estimate thus stands as a key reference point for that exercise.
This article was produced with artificial intelligence assistance from verified sources and reviewed by a human editor before publication.