Mexico City, Dec 20 (EFE).- Mexico’s president said Thursday that the army will be tasked with a project in the town of Santa Lucia to expand the capital’s existing airport.
That less ambitious plan just north of Mexico City will be carried out following the cancelation of a partially built, $13.3 billion entirely new airport for that giant metropolis.
“They (the soldiers) have the ability to build the airport and funds are already being assigned in the soon-to-be-approved budget for this purpose,” Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, known as AMLO, said in his daily morning press conference.
Referring to companies who had won contracts for the canceled replacement airport in the town of Texcoco, the president said his government was reaching an agreement to redirect those agreements to new infrastructure works, including a rail project in the Yucatan Peninsula.
AMLO also said the government had been successful in its buyback of bonds issued to fund the Texcoco airport project.
That project was canceled after voters rejected it in a controversial, informal referendum and instead backed an alternative plan to add civilian airport infrastructure to the Santa Lucia military base.
On Wednesday, Mexico’s Finance and Public Credit Secretariat said a revised offer to repurchase bonds issued to fund the partially built airport had received overwhelming support from the holders of those notes.