Mexico's factory output likely rose 1.9% in September, INEGI says
The estimate comes with a wide margin, from a 0.9% drop to a 4.7% gain. The official figure is due in mid-November.
Mexican manufacturing activity was 1.9% higher in September 2026 than a year earlier, according to an estimate in a bulletin from INEGI, the national statistics agency, released Wednesday. The index stood at 108.0 points.
The measure, known as the IMOAM, is experimental. It gives an early read on a figure INEGI will publish about 18 days later, the monthly industrial activity indicator (IMAI), and is built from business registries and electricity use at the national power utility CFE and the grid operator CENACE, on the premise that factory output tracks power consumption.
It is not a final number.
INEGI puts the 95% confidence interval for the annual change at -0.9% to 4.7%, or 105.1 to 111.1 points on the index. The final result could be a slight decline or a gain of nearly 5%.
How August played out
For August, the IMOAM had estimated annual growth of 1.6%, within a range of -1.2% to 4.4%. The IMAI, released Oct. 12, later showed manufacturing up 3.2% from a year earlier, in seasonally adjusted terms, and up 1.2% from July.
The early estimate came in lower, though still inside its range. The two are not strictly comparable: the IMOAM uses unadjusted figures.
Since it began in August 2015, the IMAI for manufacturing has landed inside the IMOAM's 95% interval in nine of every ten months.
Manufacturing is the largest branch of Mexican industry and the one where exporters are concentrated. With a range that includes negative numbers, the September IMAI, due in mid-November, will show whether the gain holds.
