Key Points
—President Claudia Sheinbaum and Economy Secretary Marcelo Ebrard launched a new phase of the country’s investment strategy on Monday, framed as Plan México Acciones, with the business council seated up front.
—The phase is meant to convert a $407 billion private-investment portfolio of 2,539 projects into actual construction by removing permitting bottlenecks at federal, state and municipal levels.
—The launch lands as Sheinbaum’s approval has slipped to a 51 percent floor and as Mexico tries to lift investment-to-GDP from roughly 21 to 26 percent during her sexenio.
Sixteen months after the original Plan México unveiling, Mexico’s biggest investor-facing pitch has shifted from “what we will do” to “what is blocking us from doing it.”
Plan México Acciones launched on Monday morning at the National Palace in Mexico City, with President Claudia Sheinbaum and Economy Secretary Marcelo Ebrard presenting it as a follow-on phase to the broader Plan México first announced in January 2025. The Rio Times, the Latin American financial news outlet, reports that the country’s main business federation, the Consejo Coordinador Empresarial led by José Medina Mora, sat in the front row, signalling the executive’s intent to make this phase a public-private execution sprint rather than another announcement of headline numbers.
The structural backdrop is straightforward. Ebrard’s portfolio of committed private investment reached $406.8 billion in February, up from $367.9 billion at the start of the year, spread across 2,539 projects with an estimated 1.63 million jobs. The October-to-September window of converting commitments into ground-breakings is what the new phase is built around.
What Plan México Acciones Actually Tries to Fix
The bottleneck Sheinbaum‘s team has been openly discussing is permitting. State and municipal trámites can stall projects for years even after federal approval, and 32 state-level investment promotion offices were stood up in the second half of 2025 to track and unblock files. Plan México Acciones formalises that effort with a single window for federal, state and municipal procedures and a public list of beneficiary fiscal regimes.
It also puts the energy file at the centre. Medina Mora described energy as “the spear point” for unlocking investment in adjacent sectors like health, education and roads, an unusually direct framing from a business-council president of the constraint that has dogged Mexican manufacturing growth for the past five years. Ebrard has tied the phase to the Plan de Inversión en Infraestructura para el Desarrollo con Bienestar 2026-2030, a 5.6 trillion-peso public-private envelope.
Why it Matters for International Investors
The headline number for foreign capital is the share of new investment within total foreign direct investment, which moved from 7 percent in 2024 to 15 percent through September 2025. That is the first reading in years to suggest greenfield commitments are out-pacing reinvestment of existing earnings, the lever Mexico needs to pull if it wants to capitalise on the shift away from China-centred supply chains.
A separate fiscal package gives the new phase teeth. Plan México offers immediate tax deductions of 41 to 91 percent on new fixed-asset investments during 2025 and 2026, a backbone designed to compress payback periods for foreign and domestic capex. Combined with USMCA-compliant tariff exemptions and Mexico’s status as the lowest-tariff partner into the United States, the package is calibrated to keep capital flowing south even as global protectionism rises.
The Approval-Rating Backdrop
The investment push lands as Sheinbaum’s political room narrows. AtlasIntel’s most recent LatAm Pulse for Bloomberg put her approval at 51 percent at the end of April, three points down from March and 15 points below a year earlier. Almost half of respondents now describe the economy as bad, and 84 percent say prices have risen since US-Israel strikes on Iran in late February.
For markets, the question is whether the pivot to permitting and execution can convert the political pressure into faster cycle times. Banobras and Nafin have already announced 70 to 80 percent guarantee facilities for SME loans of up to 20 million pesos in priority sectors, an under-discussed plumbing piece that determines whether mid-tier suppliers can scale into the new orders the steel and infrastructure agreements imply.
What to Watch After the Launch
Three near-term checkpoints will tell investors whether the phase is moving: a follow-up banking-sector signalling event flagged for the next investment cycle, the publication of voluntary investment agreements building on previous tranches summing more than $200 billion, and the next 32-state promotion-office reading. The promotion-office data is the most granular indicator of where files are actually clearing. A meaningful uptick on any of the three would confirm that bottleneck-removal is moving from rhetoric to throughput.
For a country that has spent the post-pandemic cycle benefiting from a nearshoring tailwind without consistently turning it into investment-to-GDP gains, Plan México Acciones is the test of whether bureaucracy is the binding constraint. If Mexican GDP growth moves from the 0.7 percent the IMF currently forecasts for 2026 toward Ebrard’s 2030 top-ten ambition, this phase is where it will start showing up in the data.
If permitting reform sticks, Plan México Acciones is the moment Mexico stopped announcing investment and started actually moving it.