Doing Business in Mexico

En Español

Doing Business in Mexico 2007 is the second subnational report in the series Doing Business in Mexico.

Last year, quantitative indicators on business regulations and their enforcement were created for 12 cities and states. This year, Doing Business in Mexico 2007 covers all 31 states of the Mexican Republic and measures the progress of the 12 states analyzed last year.

The report finds that some states compare well with the best of the world, while others need much reform to become globally competitive. Doing Business in Mexico 2007 gives federal, state, and local policymakers the ability to measure regulatory performance against other states and countries, learn from global and national best practices, and prioritize reforms.

Top 10 covered in the report:

Mexican City Rank Regulations
Aguascalientes, Aguascalientes 1 (Easiest) Starting a business
Guanajuato, Celaya 2 Registering property
Nuevo León, Monterrey 3 Obtaining credit
Sonora, Hermosillo 4 Enforcing a contract
Campeche, Campecheo 5  
Zacatecas, Zacatecas 6  
Querétaro, Querétaro 7  
Mochoacán, Morelia 8  
Sinaloa, Culiacán 9  
Mexico City 10  

Points of interest:

Aguascalientes was the easiest state in which to do business last year. State and city officials have successfully used the benchmark as a promotional tool to compete for business at home and abroad. Simultaneously, they have continued to press ahead with reforms. As a result, Aguascalientes earned the top rank again this year.

Querétaro, the lowest ranked overall performer last year, created a public-private task force dedicated to improving its benchmarks. The task force systematically studied bottlenecks, proposed reforms, and measured progress throughout the year. The reforms helped Querétaro climb nine ranks on the ease of doing business to number seven out of 31 states and Mexico City.
In this year’s report, three of the top six performers are “new” states: Sonora, which ranks fourth, Campeche in fifth place, and Zacatecas in sixth. Sonora and Campeche are especially efficient when it comes to property registration, ranking first and second in that indicator. Zacatecas stands out both in the ease of registering collateral to access credit, as well as in the ease of enforcing contracts, where it is the top performer. Such state and city level reforms are becoming increasingly important in a globalized world, where specific locations as much as countries compete for investment – e.g. Monterrey versus Shanghai rather than Mexico versus China.

Download a complete report and press release: