Mexico to pay MXN $75 billion to settle Texcoco Airport

On Wednesday , Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said that all the companies involved in the construction of the part-built MXN $75 billion Mexico City airport he canceled in late October had now been paid off.

The process of paying off the companies had concluded on Tuesday , López Obrador told his regular news conference.

López Obrador scrapped the airport on the grounds it was riddled with corruption and was geologically unsound.

Corruption at the Texcoco airport

The paid amount includes roughly MXN $60 billion for finished works, and almost MXN $15 billion for non-recoverable expenses.

This settles the 692 contracts that different construction companies had won to perform the project best known as Mexico’s New International Airport (NAIM).

In a news conference, the secretary of Communications and Transports, Javier Jiménez Espriú, said that the 11 biggest works, such as the terminal building , the landing strips 2, 3, and 6, the control tower, the slab of the terminal building, and the intermodal center , which represented 77% of the contracted amount, were settled with nearly MXN $10 billion ; this because these works had already been paid MXN $35 million .

Besides, as a consequence of the cancelation of the building of Texcoco’s Airport, 140,000 tonnes of iron and several cubic meters of tezontle and basalt were left, as well as work equipment, which will be sold to recover MXN $4 billion .

They could also be used for projects such as the Mayan Train , Santa Lucía International Airport , Dos Bocas refinery , or the Isthmus project

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“We complied with the commitment to take care of bonuses, to act with responsibility, to not affect any investor, and we also complied with the commitment to not owe a single peso to constructors,” said President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

The Mexican President also said that the Airport Felipe Ángeles , in the military airbase of Santa Lucía , will be constructed, despite the legal chaos surrounding it.

Jiménez Espriú detailed that the terminal building will be settled with MXN $14 billion .

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In addition, landing strip 3 will be settled with MXN 1.5 billion ; landing strip 2 with MXN $390 million ; the slab of the building with MXN $120 million ; the slab of the Center of Intermodal Transport with MXN $135 million ; and the control tower with MXN 152 million .

The head of the Communication and Transport Ministry added that as soon as all materials are taken away and the “amparos” are solved, they could give the land to start the construction of an ecologic park.

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Until now, Grupo Aeroportuario de la Ciudad de México (GACM) has been notified of 74 “amparos” related to the cancelation of the NAIM in Texcoco, but 10 have been suspended. The grant of GACM to build the airport of Texcoco has also been eliminated.

For his part, Gerardo Ferrando , CEO of GACM , commented that the trust managed by the airport group still has MXN $35.5 billion left, but they are not planning to use it for buying the shareholding of Aleatica, previously known as OHL , in Toluca International Airport .

In Toluca, a legal, administrative, accounting, and technical auditing will take place to make a calculation of the cost of Aleatica’s shares, and the results are expected within a month and a half.

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