The Latin American e-commerce giant Free market concludes 2022 with a “historic” investment of 1.45 billion dollars in Mexico, which has become its second largest market, reveals its general director in the country, David Geisen.
We are investing heavily here in Mexico, in fact this year is a historic year in terms of investments, where we invested more than 1.450 million dollars just here in Mexico and a large part of this investment is directed to logistics infrastructure”,
Geisen expresses in an interview with EFE.
The manager recalls that just four years ago Mercado Libre did not have its own warehouses, last-mile service or planes, but this 2022 “has been the year with the greatest investment and also the greatest growth in the size of the team.”
Now, he cites that 268,000 families receive their income through Mercado Libre, according to Euromonitor, so on the logistics side there will be more investment in warehouses, planes and vehicles.
“We will continue to invest heavily in Mexico because we see the potential, we see the value that the ecosystem of solutions that we are developing for millions of Mexicans brings,” Geisen remarks.
Mexico: between growth and challenges
The businessman points out that Mexico It was the country that grew the most in electronic commerce in 2019, when the sector in general increased by 35%, a percentage that accelerated to 81% in 2020 due to the covid-19 pandemic and that remained at 21% in 2021, according to Mexican Association of Online Sales (AMVO).
In this context, he adds that Free market it grew 103% in 2020 and 50% in 2021, while in the past three quarters of this year the company has reported increases of 20% to 30% in the country.
Today, Mexico is in second place in terms of business size, after Brazil and ahead of Argentina, and that has changed after more than 20 years in which Argentina was in second place.”
details Geisen.
Even so, the businessman acknowledges the challenges that the economy brought in 2022, such as the disruption of supply chains and inflation, which in Mexico reached a rate of 8.7% in August and September, its highest levels since 2000.
This pushed the company to look for improved data analysis and tools to avoid falling inventories, because the shortages resulted in longer supply times and users looking for cheaper products.
However, Geisen insists that these problems did not imply lower growth.
The opportunities and challenges (for 2023) are many and very complex, because so much growth and so much innovation obviously requires that we continue to grow as well, not only growing, but improving on the excellence of execution”,
manifested.
The “fintech” bet in Mexico
In addition to current problems, the director of Mercado Libre points to the obstacle and opportunity that financial exclusion represents in Mexico, where 54 million people do not have a bank account, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi).
One of the most important brakes that we identified in the Mexican economy is the lack of access to credit, so today we have more than 10 million days of pre-approved credit lines for our clients on the platform”,
aim.
For this reason, Mercado Libre has opted in Mexico to go beyond electronic commerce with Mercado Pago, a platform in which any user can process payments, send money, pay for services, collect, invest and request a loan.
At the same time we are building a very important fintech business because the purpose of Mercado Libre is the democratization of commerce and money”,
Geisen highlights.
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