Sofia Cantu, Oscar Jaramillo, Valeria Bernal
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Mexicali frequently encounter bureaucratic obstacles when attempting to secure financing for exporting to the United States. While general trade barriers are widely studied, the specific impact of financial bureaucracy on these businesses remains insufficiently understood. This study aims to focus on the administrative and procedural challenges SMEs face in accessing cross-borderfinancing.
By focusing on this often-overlooked aspect, the research can provides insights for policymakers, financial institutions, and trade organizations. These findings can inform more effective support strategies to help SMEs in Mexicali overcome financial barriers and successfully expand into the U.S. market. With the right support, Mexicali’s SMEs have the potential to thrive in the U.S. market, driving innovation, creating jobs, and contributing to broader economic growth.
We started by mailing Mexicali EDC to obtain the contacts of SMEs. We received an answer 2 days later with names of SMEs and customs brokers, although we were not provided with any mail directions or cellphone numbers, it was a good start, but things were going to go downhill shortly afterthat. We sent a mail to the mail directions that appeared in the webpages of the following SMEs: Paimex, Cream Numbers, Naherco, Pling, and Genesis, and contacted the following customs brokers: Eximin, Walnut, JD Group, World Traffic, RL Jones, By Romero, G Global. None of them replied. After that, we asked multiple teachers (Ada, Mayra, Terry, Francisco) if they knew any Mexicali SMEs that exported to U.S.A., they gave us names of SMEs like: Cervecería Fauna, Cervecería Icono, GHH Rancho Higuera, Corporativo Ruva, Analítica Fremex, and Spark Technologies. This last company was the only one that replied and seemed interested in participating in the research, however, the person who was replying never received an answer from the founders of the company in order to have the interview, and that is where we hit a dead end.
We were unable to obtain much information from the companies we contacted for various reasons. The first main reason is that the object of study were Small and Medium Enterprises, which means that these companies do not have an excessive amount of employees, as opposed to large companies. Therefore, employees are highly focused on their work, and some of them hold multiple roles within the company, which results in limited time to assist college students with their activities. Another reason is that they just may not be interested in participating in a research project where they have to divulge private information about the company regarding theirfinancing and operations.
We then decided to go to Secretaría de Innovación y Economía in Mexicali´s downtown, to obtain information about the credits they offer to SMEs and ask some questions, but we were given telephone numbers of two other offices, since the one we went did not deal with that type of information. So, we obtained the number of one of the employees and messaged that person directly with some questions we had, however, the answer we received, which was not what we were expecting. After that, we called that same office, but we were told to call another day twice.
As our final resort, we decided to ask Dr. Raul Martínez for help with contact information of an SME for our project, he redirected us to Pamela Angulo, who is in the area of internships and has constant contact with companies. We had a small talk with her, where we put her up to speed with the companies we contacted, and she told us she will be setting up an online meeting to discuss the situation more profoundly and contact some companies.
That Thursday, we joined the Zoom meeting to talk about the project with Pamela Angulo and Claudia Cobeiya, however, neither of them joined the meeting to talk about the project, and that is where we completely ran out of options to continue ourinvestigation.
At the end, we did find out that the government provides support to Small and Medium Enterprises to finance their operations, since SMEs represent 99% of Mexico´s companies, these opportunities represent a big help for entrepreneurs to make their companies bigger while boosting Mexico´s economy.
