The Government of Mexico expresses its concern about the modification in the travel recommendation issued by the authorities of the United States.
With this it is suggested not to travel to 180 countries, among which are: Germany, Brazil, Canada, Spain, the Philippines, France, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Peru, and Qatar, among others. This action has a bilateral impact on the reactivation of tourism and connectivity with the North American region.
We are united with the United States by an extensive and complex common border and a diversity of natural markets, which together with Canada make up one of the main supply chains in the world. Likewise, we share communities that reside in both countries and families in both nations.
In 2019, the tourism market between Mexico and the United States reached a volume of 173,364,000 international visitors between the two countries, with 92 million visitors from the United States to Mexico, and 81 million visitors from Mexico to the United States. This volume of international visitors between the two countries represented a total expenditure of 26 billion, 873 million dollars, of which the Americans spent over double in Mexico what Mexicans spent in the United States. Restricting productive, tourist, and business mobility by inhibiting the flow of travelers between the two countries would represent a loss for the two economies, in the interior, in the border area, and in the cruise market.
In addition, travel by air from the US to this country in 2019 was 10,775,249 passengers, a figure that shows the growing connectivity between our countries. This has implications for the intense economic, tourist, social, and welfare exchanges, and affects families and communities in both territories. This agenda has represented, in the case of Mexico, 8.7 percent of GDP in 2018.
At the global level, Mexico has emphasized the need for equitable and collective responses, since there cannot be global solutions if there are countries that lag behind. Faced with the pandemic, Mexico has promoted universal inoculation and international cooperation in access to vaccines. Proof of this are the biosafety and vaccination measures, which have placed it among the 15 countries with the highest reception and application of vaccines against Covid-19, building international certainty and trust.
Without ignoring the serious economic crisis that the pandemic represents for the world and the region, the Mexican authorities understand the impact that this decision has on all nations of concern, and will address this situation with their US counterparts, since the measure is not directed solely at Mexico, but towards a wide group of countries.