THE MND ECONOMY INDEX™
Providing broad insight into the Mexican economy
MND Intelligence · Inaugural edition
Welcome to the MND Economy Index™, the latest addition to the MND Intelligence™ suite of data products from Mexico News Daily.
If you follow Mexico’s economy, you have almost certainly encountered two very different narratives. One holds that Mexico is in the midst of a historic opportunity: a nearshoring boom that could transform the country into a global manufacturing powerhouse as companies shift supply chains away from Asia. The other holds that Mexico is squandering that opportunity, held back by poor economic policy, legal frameworks, insecurity and creaking infrastructure.
Many of our readers have seen both versions of Mexico with their own eyes. You may have visited a resort city humming with tourism activity, or driven through a gleaming industrial corridor in Monterrey or Querétaro — and wondered how that squares with a country that also has some of the deepest inequality in Latin America, a country where a vast informal economy sits alongside pockets of extraordinary wealth.
The MND Economy Index™ aims to provide a realistic, data-backed and broad measure of the Mexican economy that takes both the good and the bad into account.
In our first focus month of March 2026, the MND Economy Index™ scored 63.39 — above the neutral midpoint of 50, but with room for improvement. Read on to learn about the index’s methodology, rationale and findings.
What is the MND Economy Index™?
How is Mexico’s economy really doing? It’s a deceptively simple question — and one that economic growth data alone rarely answers well. GDP for any given period tells you whether an economy is growing or shrinking, but it tells you nothing about inflation, currency stability, investor confidence or the many other forces that determine the overall health of the economy.
The MND Economy Index™ was built to go further. It is a 10-pillar, 19-indicator composite index that compiles a broad range of economic data into a single score between 0 and 100 — giving Mexico News Daily readers a clear, accessible picture of how the Mexican economy is performing across multiple dimensions.
Why did we develop the MND Economy Index™?
Mexico’s economy has become increasingly difficult to read. GDP growth has been weak for some time — yet the country continues to attract record levels of foreign direct investment, and export revenue has been growing by double digits.
It is precisely that dichotomy that motivated Mexico News Daily to develop the MND Economy Index™. The index was designed to assess the Mexican economy across a broad array of areas, and to track how that performance evolves month by month.
How does the MND Economy Index™ work?
The index is built on 10 equally weighted pillars, each scored between 0 and 100 and contributing 10% to the final score. The pillars draw on 19 data points in total, sourced from Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), the Bank of Mexico (Banxico), the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) and international financial markets.
The scoring logic falls into two types. The first are “be close to a target” pillars — where the optimal outcome is hitting a specific benchmark, and deviation in either direction is penalized. Inflation is an example: a reading of exactly 3.0% — the Bank of Mexico’s target — scores a perfect 100. Each percentage point above or below that target costs 20 points.
The second are “more growth is better” pillars — where a neutral baseline anchors to 50, and performance above or below that baseline moves the score up or down proportionally. The Economic Growth pillar is an example: growth of 2.0% scores 50 (neutral). Every additional percentage point adds 20 points; every point below subtracts 20.
It is worth noting that building an index of this kind requires judgment calls. For example, MND set the neutral benchmark for economic growth at 2.0% year-over-year growth — a modest but meaningful threshold for a developing economy — while the productivity growth neutral benchmark was fixed at 1.0%, reflecting Mexico’s historically low productivity gains. In each pillar, scores are capped at 100 and floored at 0. Given that there are 19 data points across 10 pillars, no single data point can dominate the index.
Here is a short guide to what the overall index score means.
- 85–100: Exceptional — the economy performing at a high level across nearly all indicators.
- 75–84: Strong — broad-based performance with only minor areas of concern.
- 60–74: Above neutral — meaningful strengths, but with notable room for improvement.
- 50–59: Mixed — passing marks overall, more indicators above benchmark than below.
- Below 50: Broad underperformance — more indicators below benchmark than above.
Five snapshots of an evolving Mexican economy
The MND Economy Index™ launches today with five months of back data — March, September and December 2025, and February and March 2026. The data paints a picture of an economy that is neither in crisis nor firing on all cylinders.
The index scores ranged from a low of 56.99 in March 2025 to a high of 71.06 in December 2025, before settling in the low 60s in early 2026. In every month, the score has remained above 50 — the index’s neutral midpoint — suggesting that despite well-documented headwinds, Mexico’s economy has continued to perform above its baseline across the majority of indicators.
Economic Growth was the index’s weakest pillar during most of the reference period. In four of the five months assessed, Mexico’s monthly GDP proxy, the IGAE (Global Indicator of Economic Activity), was either contracting or barely positive — with only December 2025 bucking the trend at +2.4%.
The bright spots are consistent across all five months. Inflation remained relatively close to the Bank of Mexico’s 3% target in most months, although it edged up toward 5% in March 2026. Scores for the Monetary Policy pillar have improved steadily as the Bank of Mexico cut its overnight rate from 9.0% in March 2025 to 6.75% a year later, bringing the rate closer to the central bank’s neutral range.
Increases in export revenue — most of which is derived from the shipment abroad of manufactured goods — were a consistent bright spot, with the export component of the manufacturing health pillar hitting the scoring ceiling in December 2025 and March 2026. That growth was supported in late 2025 and early 2026 by a recovery in domestic manufacturing output.
Productivity, as measured by the IGPLE (Global Indicator of Labor Productivity in the Economy), was below the 1.0% benchmark in four of the five months of the reference period — a reflection of an entrenched structural challenge.
The MND Economy Index™ in March 2026
As noted above, the MND Economy Index™ score for March 2026 was 63.39, a slight decrease compared to the previous month. Below you will see the score for each of the ten pillars that make up the index, expressed out of 10 to reflect each pillar’s exact contribution to the final composite score.
Pillars are color-coded using a traffic light system: green (a score of 7.5 or above) indicates strong performance; yellow (5.0–7.4) signals above-neutral performance but with room for improvement; and red (below 5.0) flags a pillar that is falling short of its benchmark. Where a pillar score has improved compared to the previous month, an upward arrow appears alongside its corresponding traffic light; a downward arrow indicates deterioration; and a pause symbol denotes no change.
A short description of the performance of each pillar during March 2026 accompanies each score.
🟢 ⬇️ MONETARY POLICY (9.2):
The Bank of Mexico’s rate-cutting cycle continued in March, with the overnight rate lowered to 6.75% — just above the top end of the bank’s estimated neutral range. The real interest rate, at 2.16%, also sat close to its 2.7% neutral midpoint, even as it decreased slightly due to an uptick in inflation in March. With both the nominal and real rates near their respective neutral benchmarks, Monetary Policy remained the index’s top-performing pillar in March 2026.
🟢 ⬇️ INFLATION (8.2):
Inflation increased to 4.59% in March from 4.02% in February, causing a decline in the score for the current inflation component of the pillar. However, the 12-month forward inflation forecast — which points to a rate just above the Bank of Mexico’s 3.0% target — kept the overall pillar score strong.
🟢 ⬆️ MANUFACTURING SECTOR HEALTH (7.8):
A perfect score on the exports component due to a 27.7% annual increase in goods exports — almost double February’s increase — pushed the Manufacturing Sector Health pillar into green territory in March. The overall score was held back, however, by a more modest performance on the domestic production side. Manufacturing output grew 1.1% year-on-year, up from 0.9% in February. While the rate cleared the neutral benchmark of 0%, it fell well short of the growth needed to replicate the exports component’s perfect score.
🟡 ⬇️ INVESTMENT CLIMATE (7.5):
The top contributor to the pillar in March was the S&P/BMV FIBRAS Total Return Index, which tracks the performance of Mexico’s listed real estate investment trusts. The index grew 27.9% year-on-year, a slight softening from February’s 32.7%. Foreign direct investment, measured on a rolling 12-month basis, held steady at 10.8% year-on-year growth, unchanged from February pending the release of FDI data for the first quarter of 2026.
🟡 ⬇️ SOVEREIGN RISK (6.7):
Mexico’s sovereign credit ratings remained unchanged in March, with Moody’s and S&P both holding a BBB rating and Fitch maintaining BBB−, all with stable outlooks. The pillar’s month-on-month decline was driven entirely by a widening in Mexico’s 5-year credit default swap spread, which rose from 88.53 basis points in February to 110.29 basis points in March — reflecting a rise in the market-implied cost of insuring against a Mexican sovereign default. In May, S&P revised its outlook on Mexico’s sovereign rating from stable to negative, a development that will weigh on this pillar in future editions.
🟡 ⬇️ CURRENCY STABILITY (6.2):
This pillar penalizes significant deviation from a 19.00 USD:MXN exchange rate baseline in either direction, recognizing that a peso that has strengthened too far from this benchmark — which is based on the 2025 average rate — can erode export competitiveness and reduce the purchasing power of remittances, just as a weakening peso raises import costs. The spot rate component of the pillar performed reasonably well, as the peso depreciated from 17.23 at the end of February to 17.93 at the end of March, moving closer to — albeit still well below — the 19.00 baseline. A bigger drag came from the volatility of the peso, with the standard deviation of daily exchange rate movements nearly doubling from 0.44% in February to 0.94% in March.
🟡 ⬇️ LABOR AND EMPLOYMENT (5.9):
The pillar score declined slightly compared to February due to a marginal reduction in annual wage growth and a slight increase in the rate of informality. Nominal wages rose 7.1% year-on-year in March — down fractionally from 7.2% in February, but still well above the 3.5% benchmark. Formal employment grew 1.2% year-on-year, unchanged from February. Those two components scored fairly well, but the overall pillar was held back by the informality component, where the share of workers in the informal economy grew by 0.5 percentage points year-on-year — a deterioration from February’s 0.3 percentage point increase. Almost 55% of all Mexican workers worked in the informal economy in March.
🟡 ⬇️ EXTERNAL INCOME (5.1):
The two components of this pillar moved in opposite directions in March, leaving the overall score just above neutral. Remittances grew 4.9% year-on-year — a significant improvement from February’s 0.4% — providing a solid contribution to the pillar. Tourism revenue, however, contracted 4.4% year-on-year, reversing February’s modest positive reading and dragging the pillar down.
🔴 ⏸️ PRODUCTIVITY (4.8):
The Productivity pillar was unchanged from February, as the IGPLE — INEGI’s quarterly productivity measure — held at 0.9% year-on-year growth, a fraction below the 1.0% neutral benchmark. The pause symbol reflects the quarterly release cycle of the IGPLE. As was the case in February, data for the final quarter of 2025 was used to assess this pillar in March. While the pillar score sits in red territory, the gap between Mexico’s productivity growth and its benchmark remains narrow.
🔴 ⬆️ ECONOMIC GROWTH (2.0):
The economic growth pillar remained a drag on the MND Economy Index™ score in March. Year-over-year growth improved to 0.5% — up from a contraction of 0.3% in February — but the modest expansion remained well below the 2.0% neutral benchmark required to score 5.0 out of 10. While a score of 2 out of 10 is low, it is markedly better than the 0.4 out of 10 result recorded in February, when the economy 0.3% compared to the same month of 2025.
Mexico News Daily
