Buen Fin, the annual discount promotion that echoes “Black Friday” north of the border, begins Friday.
Some 60,000 businesses are going to take part in the campaign this year.
Participating shops, which will display red-and-black signs in their windows, are kicking off the Christmas shopping season with coordinated sales that last until Monday, Nov. 19.
Shoppers from hundreds of miles around travel to Mérida, perceived in smaller towns as a shopping mecca, to take advantage of the promotions.
Municipal, state and federal workers will receive 25 percent of their Christmas bonuses in time to spend it on Buen Fin sales.
Organizers expect the program to grow 5 percent compared to last year despite the fact that the Bank of Mexico reported that consumer confidence fell in the last two months.
“The (economic) indicators look good, we’ve been growing for 34 consecutive quarters,” said Mexico Finance Minister Jose Antonio Gonzalez Anaya.
Nationally, El Buen Fin 2018 will seek to sell 97 billion pesos in goods and services. Electronics are the most popular purchase.
“El Buen Fin” was created with the objective to move company inventories and strengthen the domestic market as a way to drive the economy, said economic minister and chief NAFTA negotiator Ildefonso Guajardo.
“It has become good public policy and the agreement of collaboration (with the businesses) allows us to provide a certain level of certainty for the next decade,” Guajardo said.
Mexico’s economy, the second largest in Latin America after Brazil, could grow 2-2.6 percent this year, according to forecasts by the Central Bank of Mexico (Banxico). In 2017, Mexico’s GDP grew 2 percent.
