Mexico. According to the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), low growth in the construction industry, following the pandemic, would be the cause of a marked decrease in the sale of firefighting equipment.
Javier Fernández Soto, executive secretary at the NFPA, Mexico chapter, said that two years after the changes generated by the Covid 19 pandemic, fire equipment manufacturing companies are affected because the construction companies, their main customers, as well as the development of works, were paralyzed. To this he added, "we are surrounded by risks, so we must review and analyze each of the sites we seek to protect, but unfortunately prevention issues are not studied in depth in Mexico."
Similarly, Javier was emphatic that conflagrations could be avoided with executive plans and thus reduce the loss of human life. He also stressed that 80% of companies, businesses or homes that have fire equipment, acquire them only for compliance with the authority, rather than for a preparation for a possible incident, so he recommended that, prior to the purchase, a specialist advice be attended.
The difficulties of the construction sector
To understand how battered the construction sector is and why its demand for firefighting equipment has dropped so much, it is important to review the figures for the past two years. According to data from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of construction closed 2021 at -1.9%, the largest drop since the second quarter of 2020, where it stood at -30% compared to an overall GDP of -17.9%.
According to the Mexican Chamber of the Construction Industry (CMIC), 2021 was not favorable, since "construction materials, at the producer level, registered an average annual increase of 17.4% in December." However, the costs for this year have had an increase of up to 49%. The president of the CMIC, Francisco Solares Alemán, revealed that since the beginning of the year the cement companies have begun to raise prices between 15% and 20%. In that sense, Francis also assured that "the inflation that we are suffering in the construction sector is 10 points above the general inflation in Mexico."
