Productive investment fell 44.9% in the first two months of this year

Mexico’s productive investment fell 44.9 percent in the first two months of 2026, the largest decline since records began, an area of ​​the economy for which President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo presented an Infrastructure Plan, which seeks to promote projects together with the private sector and financing.

In public finance reports, between January and February, the federal public sector spent 87 thousand 73.2 million pesos in physical investment, a concept that encompasses resources destined for infrastructure and tangible goods, such as machinery and equipment.

The amount is not only the lowest in five years, but also represents the largest drop since 1991, the year of the first comparable record. On February 3, the Mexican president presented an infrastructure plan that considers an investment of 5.6 billion pesos throughout the six-year term in order to develop energy, railway and highway projects with the private sector.

The Treasury reports show that, due to how low expenditures were in the first two months of last year in education, health and supply, drinking water and sewerage, all of these concepts rebounded between January and February 2026.

In the case of investment in energy, there is a drop of 75.3 percent in real terms, going from 95,498.3 million pesos in the first two months of 2025 to 24,552 million in the comparable period of the current year.

This reduction in the energy sector includes hydrocarbons, a concept in which it was reduced by 78 percent, and the electricity sector, in which the decrease reached 6 percent. Without including Petróleos Mexicanos, physical investment would have risen 5.4 percent.

Throughout last year, when the Treasury had the goal of reducing the public deficit – which was not achieved to the expected extent – ​​the agency reiterated that the falls in physical investment were due to the comparison with 2024, when spending in this concept was accelerated to comply with the projects of the last administration. Although the reduction in the public deficit continues, since only in the first two months of 2026 it was cut by 81.6 percent, going from 128.1 billion pesos to 23.6 billion, general expenses are increasing more than income.

According to the report, budget revenues for the first two months of the year totaled one trillion 422.6 billion pesos, 2 percent more than in the comparable period last year, while net spending was one trillion 519.2 billion pesos, 2.5 percent more than what was recorded until February 2025. In this context, the increase in public debt in its broadest measure – the historical balance of the financial requirements of the public sector – was of 2.2 percent also in real terms, to end February at 18 trillion 691.7 billion pesos.

Shift to a new scheme

The federal government reported that the drop in physical investment responds to the scheduling and the “implementation of a new public and mixed investment scheme, derived from the recent approval of the Law for the Promotion of Investment in Infrastructure for Wellbeing,” which was approved on March 26, almost a month after the reported period.

In an informative note, the federal government detailed that, after the approval of this law, “federal agencies will be able to enter the project contracting phase, which naturally affects budget execution for the following months.

“In this sense, the observed behavior should be understood as a temporary adjustment before the execution of the projects included in the investment strategy.”

He noted that this also happened in the energy sector, in which the call for new projects was published at the beginning of February and on the 27th, proposals were received to generate up to 37.7 gigawatts, which “evidence a significant excess demand for investment,” since the initial call was for 7.5 gigawatts.