Xochitl Galvez Ruiz reiterated commitment to making transparent the information regarding the construction of the Olmeca Refinery, as well as the other emblematic works made by the current administration and been classified as “national security.”
“Yes, actually in the second debate I signed this commitment for all Mexicans so that the information about Dos Bocas, Tren Maya, AIFA and what happened with the cancellation of the Mexico City International Airport be made public,” she replied to Energia a Debate.
In the second debate among presidential candidates held on Sunday, April 28, the candidate for the opposition coalition “Force and Heart for Mexico” promised that if she wins the elections this Sunday, June 2, she will sign a decree to declare the information about these projects as open, detailed, transparent and truthful.
In this sense, she referred to the Olmeca refinery, which is being built in the Port of Dos Bocas, Tabasco; the Mayan Train, in the Yucatan Peninsula, and the conditioning of the Santa Lucía Military Base, Zumpango, State of Mexico, converted into the “Felipe Angeles” International Airport (AIFA), in addition to the cost for the cancellation of the construction of the New Mexico City International Airport (NAICM), in Texcoco, EdoMex.
In May 2023, the Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, issued an agreement declaring all public works carried out by the federal administration as “national security” and “public interest.”
These included the works referred above, as well as the infrastructure works related to the Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and the international airports of Palenque, Chiapas; and Chetumal and Tulum, both in Quintana Roo.
This agreement published by Decree on May 18 of last year canceled all possibility to any request for information made by citizens through the Transparency mechanism warrantied by the National Institute of Transparency, Access to Information and Protection of Personal Data (INAI). However, on the same day of its publication, the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) declared agreement as unconstitutional.
How much did Dos Bocas cost?
The exact cost is unknown, since data are not published on any of the federal government’s digital platforms, including the official website of the refinery.
On May 3 of this year, President López Obrador assured in his morning conference that 16,816 million dollars had been invested in Dos Bocas, just over double the 8 billion budgeted in 2019 when the work was announced.
In its annual report published this year, Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) said that the figure stood at 15,963 million dollars.
However, in 2022 the estimates were even up to 18 billion dollars.
Transparent governments, afterward
Of the three presidential candidates, only Galvez Ruiz has explicitly said that she will open data related to the works developed in the current administration.
Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, candidate for the ruling coalition “Let’s Keep Making History,” said in the debates that in her administration as head of Government of Mexico City, data on resource management was transparent, since it was managed digitally.
Jorge Álvarez Máynez, standard bearer of the Citizen Movement party, has spoken out in favor of a transparent government, he even agreed with Galvez Ruiz in reducing or eliminating the figure of direct assignments in contracts with the federal government, but nothing about revealing the data of the so-called “mega works” of the Lopez Obrador administration.
As of November 2023, the three projects, Dos Bocas, Tren Maya and AIFA had already reported a 468,159 million peso cost overrun (about 7.9 million dollars, at the current exchange rate), as revealed at the time by the newspaper Reforma.