Introduction
Querétaro, a Mexican state experiencing a surge in nearshoring and new business openings, faces at least 403 regulatory barriers, with potential economic costs exceeding 4.4 million pesos due to delays in opening or operating a business, according to a study by México Evalúa.
Cost of Opportunity (COP) Analysis
The study examined the COP caused by regulatory delays in Querétaro and its industrial municipalities: Querétaro, El Marqués, and San Juan del Río. COP represents the money a business forgoes by waiting for government authorization instead of dedicating that time and resources to economic activities.
- State-level COP ranges from a minimum of 50,623.1 pesos to a maximum of 2.4 million pesos.
- El Marqués has the highest COP, fluctuating between 83,538.3 pesos and over 2.07 million pesos.
- San Juan del Río’s COP ranges from 110,151.9 to 934,804.9 pesos.
- Querétaro’s COP ranges from 61,261.9 to 560,849.5 pesos.
Combining state and municipal costs, El Marqués has a maximum average cost over 4.4 million pesos; San Juan del Río’s combined cost is over 3.3 million pesos; and Querétaro’s average cost is around 2.9 million pesos.
Regulatory Barriers
The study identified 403 opportunities for adjusting Querétaro’s regulations, with the most challenges in efficiency government (262), quality regulation (124), and ease of doing business (17).
- State-level: 92 points of normative modification
- El Marqués: 120 points
- Querétaro capital: 109 points
- San Juan del Río: 82 points
The report also presents a roadmap with reform proposals, including simple improvements like reviewing the drafting and semantic homogenization of regulations.
Querétaro has become a crucial industrial and high-value manufacturing hub, attracting 148 investment projects worth nearly 86,000 million pesos and creating 42,180 jobs from 2021 to 2024.
Recommendations
México Evalúa drafted a memorandum of recommendations to strengthen regulatory clarity through standardized reglamentation drafting, emphasizing explicit identification of obligated parties and their responsibilities.
- Simplify and expedite procedures, especially in critical business life cycle stages, using single-window schemes, preferably digital.
- Implement process reengineering in key state and municipal dependencies to standardize requirements, reduce timeframes, and eliminate unnecessary steps and duplicate requirements.
Juan José Cabrera, Director of ESZ Smart Solutions and Vice President of Coparmex Nacional’s Competitiveness and Regulatory Improvement Commission, highlighted that the new regulatory improvement law offers an opportunity to advance in government simplification and digitalization. The challenge, he said, lies in implementation and states’ capacity to adopt this policy.
