Mexico closed 2025 with a historic record of foreign direct investment: 40.870 million dollars, 10,8% more than the previous year. In the same country, one third of the member companies of the American Chamber of Commerce allocate more than 5% of their operating budget to private security. Both statements are true, and understanding why is what separates an informed investor from one who gets a surprise.
What makes the headlines
Investor confidence in Mexico is at its strongest in years. The country moved up six places in Kearney’s Foreign Direct Investment Confidence Index in 2026, from 25 to 19, in a global context where capital has become much more selective due to tariffs and geopolitical tension.
Projections point to around 48.000 million dollars in foreign investment this year. The engine has a name: nearshoring. Companies are moving production to Mexico to shorten supply chains, cut logistics costs and take advantage of the treaty with the United States and Canada.
The side that hits the bottom line
And at the same time, this:
- Companies allocate between a 2% and 10% of their annual budget to protecting facilities, the supply chain and personnel, depending on the state and sector.
- A third of the American Chamber of Commerce’s members —which together represent more than 20% of Mexico’s GDP— already spend more than 5% of their operating budget on security.
- The cost of crime to businesses has been estimated at 0,67% of the country’s GDP.
- Extortion cost businesses around 1.300 million dollars in 2023, and cases keep rising: 10% more in the first quarter of 2025 compared with the same period the year before.
One figure forces a cautious reading of all the above: the Mexican statistics institute estimates that 97% of extortion cases go unreported, out of fear or distrust of the authorities. In other words, the real number is worse than the published one, and nobody knows by how much.
Why both coexist
Because institutional investors don’t decide based on headlines: they discount. They put the security cost into the financial model, compare it with what they save on logistics and tariffs, and if the numbers work, they invest. For many deals, that extra 5% is still cheaper than manufacturing in Asia and shipping across an ocean.
What they won’t forgive is surprise. A project that didn’t budget for security from the start doesn’t run into a security problem: it runs into a profitability problem, the thing that kills investments.
It’s worth adding that security isn’t the only bottleneck. Industry analyses also point to shortages of bilingual and digital technical talent, and strains on electricity, water and roads in the industrial hubs that have grown fastest.
What this means for those marketing an investment
- Aggregate data is useless. “Mexico” is not a single risk unit: security costs range from 2% to 10% depending on the state. Communicating the national average is not communicating anything.
- Putting the cost on the table builds credibility, it doesn’t undermine it. The professional investor already knows the figure. The one who hides it doesn’t look optimistic; they look unprepared.
- Nearshoring is not an argument, it’s a calculation. Anyone selling industrial locations will have to come with comparative numbers —logistics, tariffs, labor, security— and not with a map of proximity to Texas.
- Trust is built on what can be verified. Moving up six places in an independent index is worth more than a hundred adjectives in a brochure.
The summary
Mexico is attracting more capital than ever and that capital is paying a real, measurable risk premium. Anyone who tells only the first half is doing marketing. Anyone who tells only the second is engaging in alarmism. Both together are, simply, the analysis.
Sources: Kearney Foreign Direct Investment Confidence Index 2026; official foreign direct investment figures for Mexico in 2025; reports from the American Chamber of Commerce of Mexico and business risk and extortion analyses consulted in English on 19 August 2026. Image: Alejandro Islas Photograph AC / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.
