Mexico GDP Nowcaster

Real-time estimate of Mexico IGAE/GDP growth — updated monthly as new data arrives

How the nowcast works

Mexico's IGAE (Indicador Global de la Actividad Económica) is INEGI's monthly proxy for GDP, published with a ~45-day lag. This nowcaster bridges that gap using four OLS bridge equations fitted on quarterly data since 2016:

Activity bridge — IMEF Manufacturing and Non-Manufacturing PMI (3-month moving averages), capturing domestic business-cycle momentum.
External bridge — US Industrial Production YoY, WTI crude oil YoY, and IMAI Manufacturing Index YoY, reflecting Mexico’s trade and industrial linkages.
Financial bridge — USD/MXN YoY and IPC Bolsa Mexicana YoY, incorporating real-time financial-market signals.
Construction bridge — IMAI Construction Index YoY, directly capturing the fiscal/public-investment channel (the primary driver of Mexico’s 2025 slowdown).

Each bridge is validated with an expanding-window out-of-sample test (train from 2016, evaluate 2018–2025, excluding COVID quarters). Bridges are combined using inverse-RMSE ensemble weights — better-fitting bridges receive higher weight. The current-quarter estimate (red star, plotted at today’s date) uses only the months of data available so far — it updates each month as new data arrives. The 90% confidence interval comes from 1,000 residual bootstrap iterations. Because the quarter is still in progress, treat the estimate as directional rather than precise.

Bridge performance (OOS 2018–2025, ex-COVID): Activity: 1.63% OOS RMSE | External: 1.21% OOS RMSE | Financial: 1.79% OOS RMSE | Construction: 1.11% OOS RMSE. Ensemble weights: Activity: 21% | External: 28% | Financial: 19% | Construction: 31%. COVID quarters (2020 Q2 – 2021 Q2) excluded from estimation and validation. Last updated: 2026-03-05 13:54 UTC.