The central state of Guanajuato, the largest automotive economy in Mexico, will exceed $4.5 billion of automotive investment and $7.0 billion of all Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the six-year term of the current state government that ends next year, the state promoter of investments said in an interview with SteelOrbis.
“In the current government of Guanajuato, 78 investment projects have been successfully completed with an accumulated investment that already exceeds $6.2 billion. Of that total, 70% is from projects in the automotive industry," the head of the Secretariat for Sustainable Economic Development, Ramón Alfaro Gómez, told SteelOrbis in a telephone interview.
"Guanajuato will exceed the investment of $7.0 billion before the end of the administration next year (September 2024)," said the state investment promoter.
Guanajuato, located 236 miles (379 km) northwest of the Zócalo of Mexico City, is the sixth largest economy in Mexico for its contribution to GDP, and is the largest automotive economy in the country with four commercial vehicle assembly companies, one of heavy vehicles, a producer of engines and a producer of transmissions and dozens of auto parts companies.
In the government of Diego Sinhue Rodríguez Vallejo, which began in September 2018 to date (ends in September 2024), Guanajuato captured more than $4.3 billion in FDI from the automotive industry with the creation of 25,000 jobs.
Alfaro said that Guanajuato is the only state in Mexico with vehicle production by General Motors (in the city of Silao), Honda (Celaya), Mazda (Salamanca), Toyota (in Apaseo el Grande) and Hino Motors (Silao). In addition to Volkswagen (Silao) that produces engines for its plants (Volkswagen and Audi in Puebla) and for export, in addition to the Ford Motor (Irapuato) automotive transmission plant.
Last year, the official commented, 720,000 vehicles were manufactured in Guanajuato and for this reason it is the largest vehicle producer in the country. He said that General Motors is the company that produces the most with a vehicle every 90 seconds and therefore in 2022 it manufactured 338,000 units in the state.
In the state there are more than 50 companies that produce auto parts for electric vehicles and of these at least 15 companies are already suppliers of the American Tesla Inc., for which they will increase their investments to meet the future demand for inputs from the Tesla plant in New Lion.
In addition, he said that at the moment they have three investment projects from companies in the Chinese automotive industry, "which I hope will materialize in the following months." He said that each project has an investment base of at least $100 million and just one of them could generate 2,000 new jobs.