Coparmex Cancún Tallies Economic Losses From Rolling Blackouts

Cancún, Quintana Roo — Intermittent electricity supply across the Yucatan Peninsula has kept Cancún’s business sector on alert, with the local employers’ federation beginning to quantify its economic losses from blackouts amid slowing consumption and ahead of the winter high season.

María Jovita Portillo Navarro, president of Coparmex, the Confederation of Employers of the Mexican Republic, in Cancún, confirmed that the organization is surveying its members to gauge the impact while pursuing a technical meeting with the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) that has yet to be scheduled.

She said the purpose of the meeting is for the state-owned utility to explain the type of maintenance performed on the substation that supplies northern Quintana Roo, its current backup capacity and its investment plan to guarantee continuity of service in the coming months.

“The problem has been going on for months. We were told there would be maintenance, but the disruptions have continued,” she said.

The impact comes at a critical moment. Portillo said that although the destination is in low season, businesses must maintain payroll and fixed costs with less cash flow while they await the year-end rebound. The lack of power, she added, jeopardizes that recovery.

“We are assessing the accumulated damage and projecting the year-end close so we can maintain our workforce. We need a balance between government, citizens and the productive sector,” she said.

While no overall loss figure is available yet, Portillo said the hardest-hit sectors are retail, restaurants and services, because of operational stoppages, spoilage of perishable inventory and spending on emergency generators.

Coparmex expects the CFE to respond to its meeting request this week and to produce its first statistical tally of the damage next week.

On the transition to self-generation with solar panels, Portillo acknowledged that the cost of investment is a barrier for small and medium-sized businesses in a low-liquidity environment, so the organization is exploring financing schemes and pooled purchasing to make the energy shift viable.