Amidst the uncertainties of the eradication of COVID-19 and when the federal government will finally lift the restrictions that forced them to close due to the coronavirus pandemic, factories in five of Mexico's six northern border states are planning to resume operations in May.

According to a recent article, the national statistics institute Inegi reported that more than 3,700 companies have factories in northern border states which employ around 1.8 million people.

In particular, the states in the boarder of Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Nuevo León and Tamaulipas plan to open in the following weeks.

National Council of the Maquiladora Industry president, Gerardo Vázquez Falcón, disclosed their plan to have all factories in the state in full swing by June 1.

Vázquez Falcón said that some factories would resume as soon as next Monday, starting with the automotive sector followed by those in the aerospace and electronics sectors.

Around 85 percent of manufacturers in Sonora export their products to the United States, where productive sectors have not halted despite the coronavirus pandemic. This week, the National Association of Manufacturers, or NAM, in that country wrote to President López Obrador to urge him to reconsider which businesses are considered essential.

According to a recent article by Latin Post, Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador describes the pandemic as a 'transitory crisis' anchored on the promise to bring everything back to normal as soon as possible.

The Bank of America earlier forecasts that Mexico's economy could decrease for another eight percent in 2020. This market decline is becoming a mainstay in Mexico's economic structure, and with the current public health crisis, improvement is nowhere to be seen.

In NAM's letter to the president, they explained that allowing factories to reopen in Mexico will help minimize disruptions to the supply chain of North America.


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On Thursday, López Obrador said that he expects there would be an agreement "in due course" that allows factories to reopen. However, the president did not offer a specific timeframe.

Nonetheless, Salvador Díaz González, president of the Otay de Mesa Industry Association in Tijuana, said that factories in his area are planning to resume operations on May 4.

Meanwhile, in Tamaulipas, Julio Almanza Armas, an import-export business owner in the border city of Matamoros, said that factories are looking at reopening on May 18 to uplift the economy somehow since the pandemic has caused activity in the Tamaulipas' ports to declined by 60 percent.

As factories resume operations, they must assure that safety measures are being observed since COVID-19 testing is not yet widespread in the country. According to another article by Latin Post, even healthcare facilities are lacking proper equipment to protect their healthcare workers from contagion as well as making it difficult for them to treat COVID-19 patients. This very problem has sparked protests on the streets because the insufficiency of supplies has already resulted in doctors and nurses getting infected and losing their lives.

As of this writing, the COVID-19 cases in Mexico hit 12,872, with 1,221 deaths and 2,627 recoveries.