MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexican President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador attacked an official report on Monday saying the cost of the 2018 cancellation of a new Mexico City airport initiated by the previous government was much higher than his government had stated.
The Mexican Federal Audit Office (ASF) said it estimated that the cancellation of the partially built airport on the city’s eastern flank cost almost 332 billion pesos (US $ 16 billion), or 232 billion pesos more than the ministry of transport declared in April 2019.
“I would like them to explain that number,” Lopez Obrador told a news conference.
“It is wrong, it is an exaggeration,” he added, suggesting that the ASF was helping its opponents.
After a widely criticized referendum that he had called, Lopez Obrador, in late October 2018, announced the closure of the project, the main infrastructure scheme of his predecessor, which initially cost $ 13 billion.
Lopez Obrador was elected president in July 2018, and made the cancellation request based on the referendum almost five weeks before taking office in December of that year.
He argued that the airport project was fraught with corruption and was geologically unhealthy. Only 1% of the population participated in the vote, which the president’s party oversaw.
The cancellation of the ambitious project has shaken the financial markets and, although the government has spent billions of dollars paying investors, Lopez Obrador has always maintained that his decision saved billions of public coffers.
He later ordered the construction of a cheaper alternative airport north of the city, supervised by the army.
The ASF report also highlighted other public sector waste during 2019 on Lopez Obrador’s watch, which he also questioned.
“Your numbers are wrong,” he said. “I have other data.”
(Reporting by Dave Graham and Raul Cortes; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)