Los Cabos, BCS. The promotion of a regional agenda that detonates the state economies of the Sea of Cortez will be an incentive for the federal government to consider this development pole in the large infrastructure works of the Federation Expenditure Budget (PEF) for 2023, he said. Carolina Garayzar, technical secretary of the Ethos public policy laboratory.
The foregoing, derived from the fact that none of the entities that make up the Sea of Cortez region – Baja California, Baja California Sur, Sonora, Sinaloa and Nayarit – was considered as a priority for investment in infrastructure in the PEF 2022, as were the states of Veracruz, Oaxaca, Tabasco and, in general, from the south-southeast, with magnificent works such as the Mayan Train, the Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the Dos Bocas refinery or the Tulum International Airport.
By participating in the Mar de Cortés Forum, whose objective is to make this region one of the main poles of sustainable development in the country and in the world, Carolina Garayzar said that the region must first be consolidated, and for this, it is necessary to take advantage of new business opportunities, such as renewable energy and sustainability in tourism and fishing.
He added that to generate conditions for economic growth in the region, it is necessary, mainly, to create an agency for the economic promotion of the Sea of Cortez; developing high-value sectors, taking advantage of their competitive advantages, as well as associating public debt with productive investment.
The expert on regulatory issues indicated that some of the main challenges are to achieve greater investment in training, implement the labor reform effectively and link education with the productive sector.
Before businessmen and authorities in the northwest of the country, he explained that improving the air, port and telecommunications infrastructure, investing in urban planning and its infrastructure, particularly drinking water, and financial inclusion should be considered as precursors of development for this area.
Currently in these five entities there are 16 international airports, four high-altitude ports, more than 50,000 kilometers of roads and railways and 6,409 kilometers of coastline (55% of the country’s coastline).
The specialist raised the need to invest in international relations to insert the region with North American and global production chains, as well as promote the new tourism: medical and home office, in addition to further promoting Foreign Direct Investment.
In this context, he highlighted the importance of the five states that make up the Sea of Cortez region, representing 9.3% of the total population and 10.8% of the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
In addition, the economic growth of this region, measured by the Quarterly Indicator of the State Economic Activity of Inegi, averaged 2.4% annually in the last decade and 4.6% in prepandemic ranges. At the national level, the results were 1.6 and 2.1%, respectively, that is, more than double the dynamism in the pre-pandemic period.
Strengths
With a marked presence of the tourism sector in the Sea of Cortez region, trade and services activities have the greatest weight within the country’s GDP, since they contribute 68% of the total, followed by industrials, with 26%, and the agricultural ones, with 6 percent.
The speaker explained that this area has a medium-high State Competitiveness Index (Imco), which measures the capacity of states to generate, attract and retain talent and investments, and stands out compared to the national average in matters such as labor formality, since 57% of jobs are insured in the IMSS, when the country’s average is 46%; The region has an average education of 8.6 years, compared to the average of Mexico of 7.9 and, in addition, 50% of the workers of these five entities have access to health, against the average of 46% of the 32 states.
Also, the area stands out in salaries. In the area of the Sea of Cortez, the average monthly income of workers is 8,750 pesos, when the national average is 7,456 pesos; while the GDP per capita is 173,000 pesos against 159,000 national. Another important comparison is the average percentage of people with incomes below the welfare line: 0.91% in the region compared to the country’s average of 1.73 percent.
Reference-www.eleconomista.com.mx