Dora Villanueva
Newspaper La Jornada
Tuesday, March 22, 2022, p. 6
Six and a half years after its construction began, the airport that was built on land on Lake Texcoco rests on a debt of 86 thousand 93 million pesos that will be paid in 2047, according to the financial statements of the private trust that was established to finance the work with additional resources to the budget.
The New Mexico City International Airport (NAICM) was buried more than three years ago after a consultation promoted by the current administration decided to suspend it. The promotion of amparos by the private initiative did not prosper to get the project afloat; however, the indebtedness contracted to build the work will continue to take public resources for at least 17 years from the taxes that are charged to airline passengers.
Currently, the only firm thing around the NAICM is the financial obligations that exceed the cost of the already completed Santa Lucía airport, and interests that in its last six installments add up to 316.2 million dollars, show the financial reports published by the Airport Group of the Mexico City (GACM), a company that has under its command the administration of the Mexico City International Airport (AICM) and that at a certain point was also in charge of carrying out the Texcoco project.
With figures at the end of 2021, the obligations of trust 80460 – which was opened to finance a part of the NAICM with private resources – amounted to 86 thousand 93 million pesos, above the 82 thousand 882 million reported in the comparable period of 2018, when the GACM Board of Directors suspended the work due to causes of general interest, including aspects of planning, budgeting and treasury
.
In December 2018, the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador negotiated the early repurchase of 1.8 billion dollars, out of a total of 6 billion that included the trust bonds to build the NAICM. The remaining 4.2 billion dollars would be paid through the AICM’s airport use fee (TUA) over a period of 19 years.
However, part of the resources contracted to finance the defunct NAICM also served to provide liquidity for the construction of the Felipe Ángeles International Airport (AIFA), initially limited to budget resources, as declared in September 2019 by the then Secretary of Communications and Transport, Javier Jiménez Espriú.
They were not the only resources that the canceled NAICM passed to the AIFA. The Superior Audit of the Federation documented that in addition to the construction costs reported by the Ministry of National Defense regarding the works in Santa Lucía, only in 2020 did GACM donate steel, stone material and electric cable, among other materials, for an amount of 5 thousand 675 million pesos.
As a balance, the resources were increased to complete the work of Santa Lucía through donations of material.
From the NAICM – whose conclusion was scheduled for at least 2024 – there remains a debt to be paid for at least the next 17 years, through TUA flows that have been affected by a fall in the aeronautical sector, a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic. covid.
