Dairy sector compettiveness indicators in Mexico, after NAFTA

Abstract

The main objective in this research was to calculate the competitiveness indices to the dairy sector in Mexico after NAFTA: commercial opening index, food selfsufficiency, Balassa Index, Vollrath Index, additive revealed competitive advantage index, and export-import index in a period from 1994 to 2017. The results show that the commercial opening for the whole milk is only 30 %. The self sufficiency of México in whole milk is less than 1%. The Balassa index shows that only 0.08 % of the whole milk exports in the world come from México. The Vollrath index shows that Mexico does not have commercial competitiveness in whole milk. Mexico´s index of revealed additive competitiveness is of 21%. Last, the imports and exports index is less than 0.5%. Mexico´s growing of milk production is not enough to satisfy the industry in the country and to reinforce has to import. Concluding that, after Nafta during more than twenty years Mexico is still whole milk import dependent from United States of America. It is recommended to make associations of dairy productive chains in the country and to explore new markets not only USA.