Internet Transforms Mexico’s Economy, Businesses

Mexican businesses with an online presence represented 7.3 percent of total establishments, employing 41.1 percent of the country’s total workers, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography’s (INEGI) 2019 Economic Census. 

INEGI reports that there were 975,000 websites with a Mexican domain in September 2020, most of them in the retail sector. These websites received payments mainly through electronic payment platforms and credit cards. Mexico is in the Top 5 of countries with the highest growth of e-commerce retail, according to the Mexican Association of Online Sales (AMVO). The report shows that 21.8 percent of companies with a website used this tool to offer goods and services online, while 77.2 percent used websites for publishing and informative purposes.

“Retailers did not enter the market as tech companies but today, all companies have to be seen as tech-enabling organizations,” said Daniel Navas, Co-Founder and CEO, Mora Mora, on MBF 2022.

The data was recovered through Big Data techniques as part of CEPAL’s “Big Data for the Measurement of the Digital Economy”project. CEPAL allied with Dutch company Dataprovider to obtain the data, generating a database that offers an approximation of the Internet activity taken by Mexican companies. The businesses measured in this project were linked to the 2019 Economic Censuses through the Statistical Business Registry of Mexico (RENEM). 

“The Internet economy has been studied by INEGI in recent years from different perspectives and through different sources of information, both traditional and alternative,” says the Institute. The Internet economy is expected to continue evolving as technology continues to transform every human activity. For example, using the Metaverse, e-commerce players could even leverage m-platforms to market and sell physical products to users, writes Karen Lellouche, Managing Director, BCG.