Mexico is one of Latin America's most industrialized nations. Manufacturing and mining . Motor vehicles, processed food, steel, chemicals. paper and textiles have joined more traditional products such as sugar, coffee, silver, lead, copper and zinc. Among Mexico's biggest national assets are its oil reserves, the eighth largest in the world, and its gas reserves. Concentrated mainly along the Gulf Coast and belonging to a government owned monopoly, Pemex, these reserves yield about one tenth of Mexico's export earnings and one third of the government's revenues.

Half of Mexico's output is produced within 150km of Mexico City, though northern states such as Nuevo Leon and Baja California are increasingly important, aided by I their proximity to that major export market, the USA, and by their many maquiladoras. Maquiladoras are factories (usually foreignowned) that are allowed to import raw materials, parts and equipment duty free for processing or assembly by inexpensive Mexican labor. Maquiladoras employ almost I million Mexicans.

Mining, Mexico's income source in colonial times, remains significant in the northern half of the country and accounts for about 3% of the national product. Mexico is still the world's largest silver producer.

About 30% of the workforce is in service industries. Tourism is one of the most important of these. Some 20 million foreign visitors a year, more than half of them crossborder day trippers, bring in around US$8 billion of foreign exchange (petrochemical exports are of a similar order), and the domestic tourism business is three times as big. Agriculture occupies about 25% of Mexico's workers but produces only about 8% of the national product. Around 10% to 12% of Mexico is planted with maize, wheat, rice and beans, but the country still imports more grain than it exports. Small farming plots became prevalent after the redistribution of hacienda land to ejidos following the revolution. These plots are often farmed at subsistence level, their owners lacking the technology and capital to render them more productive. Larger scale farming goes on primarily along the Gulf Coast (coffee and sugarcane), in the north and northwest (livestock, wheat and cotton), and in the Bajio area, north of Mexico City (wheat and vegetables). Nominal GDP (2003 est.): $615 billion. (7,4 trillion pesos, 2004 Q2).

Per capita GDP (2003 est.): $5,945.

Annual real GDP growth 2003 (1.3%); 2002 (0.9%); 2001 (-0.3%); 2000 (6.6%) 1999 (3.7%).

Avg. real GDP growth (1999-2003): 2.1%.