Issues

Empowering a Competitive Economy in a Post-Pandemic World

The post-pandemic economy will bring new opportunities for New Mexico to improve its overall competitiveness and grow the state’s economy.

New Mexico and the nation are at a turning point. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed many strategic economic vulnerabilities for our country and for New Mexico. With over 40% of New Mexico’s state budget tied to the oil and gas industry, and a limited number of economic based jobs, New Mexico must take concrete steps to grow and diversify our economy for the future.

With New Mexico’s strategic assets including rail access and interstate highway infrastructure, access to two national laboratories and research universities, technically trained university graduates, low housing costs with surplus locations for manufacturing facilities, access to clean, reliable, and affordable energy, combined with and a low risk of natural disasters, New Mexico is ideally positioned to be a key beneficiary of future near-shoring and re-shoring of critical technology, manufacturing and logistics infrastructure to the United States and western hemisphere.

In June, NMCC contracted with Economic Leadership (EL), a boutique North Carolina economic consulting firm with a history of working directly with state chambers and state governments in the development of economic strategies to help build a business driven, statewide economic strategic action plan for New Mexico.

Sayuri Yamada, NMCC’s economic strategy working group chair, Rob Black, NMCC President and CEO, and Ted Abernathy, founder and CEO of Economic Leadership presented NMCC’s Economic Strategic Action Plan for New Mexico at NMCC’s Legislative FOCUS event in December 2020.