February was a month of mixed results for the automotive industry, on the one hand, with an increase in domestic production, but also a continued drop in exports, Inegi reported on Friday.
In the second month of the year, 240,479 vehicles were manufactured in the country, which represented an increase of only 0.66 percent with respect to the same period last year, thus reversing a seven-month trend of annual contractions.
However, Mexican car shipments abroad totaled 201,868 units, which represented a 5.66% contraction, adding eight consecutive months of annual rate declines.
In its monthly comparison, car manufacturing fell back after showing a recovery in January, while exports had three negative results in a row.
With these results, the automotive industry shows that it has not recovered from the crisis caused by the pandemic that resulted in the shortage of parts such as semiconductors or chips, which are necessary for various parts of a vehicle. Even during February, production at the Volkswagen plant in Puebla and the Mazda plant in Guanajuato was affected.
Organizations such as the Mexican Association of Automotive Distributors (AMDA) and the National Auto Parts Industry (INA) had anticipated that the chip crisis would extend into the second half of the year, affecting domestic production.
However, specialists warned in recent days that due to the war between Russia and Ukraine, global value chains are under threat, so that the auto parts shortage could extend into next year.
