(Bloomberg) -- Mexico City's airport authority settled a dispute with builders on an 85 billion peso ($4.45 billion) contract for the terminal at a new Mexico City airport that President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador canceled a month before taking office.
Grupo Aeroportuario Ciudad de la Mexico will pay 14.2 billion pesos, equivalent to 16.7% of the contract's total cost, to Constructora Terminal de Valle de Mexico, a consortium that includes Carlos Slim's Operadora Cicsa, the Communications and Transportation Ministry said in an emailed statement. The contracts represented 45% of the airport's total cost, the ministry said.
AMLO, as the leftist president is known, in October said he planned to cancel the $13 billion Texcoco project, calling it a waste of taxpayer money and riddled with overly generous contracts for private developers and investors. He plans to build an airport instead at the Santa Lucia air base.
At an event in the state of Oaxaca on Saturday, AMLO repeated that the nation will save 100 billion pesos from ending the project. Opponents question the government's savings estimate, given the contracts and obligations to investors.
“The liquidation of what was owed to the companies that were hired to do the Texcoco airport is almost finished,” he said. “That debt has already been paid and we've been freed from the problem.”
--With assistance from Andrea Navarro.
To contact the reporter on this story: Eric Martin in Mexico City at emartin21@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Juan Pablo Spinetto at jspinetto@bloomberg.net, Steve Geimann
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