Mexico’s policy in combatting COVID developed along two lines. First of all, in healthcare settings, the contacts between people were minimized and social distancing introduced to combat the decease. In economic sphere, monetary stimuli were enacted to let the economy survive the crisis without drastic impact to the country’s GDF growth. Assessing the described measures, it can be said that healthcare organization and measures aimed to stop the pandemic can be described positively. Indeed, at the initial stage, due to the lack of vaccinations, the primary aim of the government was to stop the loss of lives. This aim was met by social distancing and minimizing contacts among the population.
From the monetary perspective, loosening fiscal and monetary policy helped to curb the negative impact of social distancing on the economy in crisis and support the economic growth in difficult times. However, these measures have a downside to them in the form of growing inflation due to the many monetary stimuli introduced by the country (Hannan et al., 2020). To put it in different words, from the economic perspective, the described measures did help the economy in crisis but at the same time created lasting problems after in the form of inflation spiral. That is why these measures cannot be assessed positively since they created long-lasting disbalance in the economic system for the sake of one-time economic boost. It can be argued that economic support in crisis should have been better measured to reflect the risks of inflation skyrocketing in the post-pandemic period. Instead, careful assessment of the potential downsides was not done, that is why the country today struggles with economic circumstances of its ill-conceived policy during the pandemic times.
Reference
Hannan, S. A., Honjo, K., & Raissi, M. (2020). Mexico needs a fiscal twist: Response to COVID-19 and beyond. IMF Working Paper No. 2020/215.