Mexico opens a train that will compete with the Panama Canal

He the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, open this friday the Isthmus of Tehuantepec Interoceanic Corridor (CIIT) trainone of the last symbolic acts of his government and by which he hopes to unite the Pacific Ocean with the Atlantic to compete commercially with Panama Canal.

The work will connect Port of Salina Cruz (Oaxaca, Pacific), with Coatzacoalcos (Veracruz, Atlántico), in a belt of 303 kilometers that will also have two deep-sea ports, freight trains, highways, three airports in Minatitlán (Veracruz) and Ixtepec and Huatulco (Oaxaca), as well as a gas pipeline and an optical network.

With this new communication route, the first of three lines of the Interoceanic Train, Mexico aims to boost international trade by connecting Asia with the East Coast of the United States and Europe through the passage, the country’s narrowest point.

A new commercial option
“Panama is already fed up and we don’t want to compete with our Panamanian brothers, we know how much it cost them to regain their sovereignty (over the Canal). It’s not about competing with our brotherly people,” López Obrador asserted during his departure. the flag of the Panamanian railway.passengers, which has nine stations.

In addition to connecting the Pacific with the Atlantic and commercial exploitation of the passage, López Obrador intends to build an international trade logistics platform with 10 industrial parks – of about 300 hectares each – and 12 development pillars, which will encourage companies to come, assemblers and jobs.

In his morning conference in Salina Cruz, the president reported that there are already agreements with Asian countries to use the CIIT.

He added that during the Forum for Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), in mid-November in San Francisco, he spoke about the project and assured that the Asian countries present showed interest in the project considering the saturation of the Panama Canal.

“It’s about the fact that there are other opportunities. Trade in Asia has grown a lot, the Pacific ports, for example Manzanillo (in Colima), are the ones that move the most containers because of the growth of Asia and there are unbeatable conditions to achieve this”he pointed out.

Furthermore, he indicated that the area of ​​influence of this work includes 115 municipalities and 9,418 communities, recalling that the developing half are four in Veracruz, six in Oaxaca and two in Chiapas.

As with the Maja Train, which was officially opened a week ago in the southeast of the country, the president pointed out that the Interoceanic Corridor represents the return of passenger and freight railways after their privatization in the 1990s.

At his conference, López Obrador said that CIIT is “a very ambitious field with other purposes.”

“We also want to maintain our sovereignty and that is why Mexican companies will be the ones who will manage the ports and will be in charge of the development poles”, he added.

Although he specified that there will be exceptions, such as “the Danish company (Copenhagen Infrastructure Fund) which commits an investment of about 10 billion dollars for the production of green hydrogen, which is a fuel that does not pollute the environment.”

In the tests so far, the train route, for which the Minister of the Navy will be in charge, lasted 6:20 hours.

At the inauguration, López Obrador was accompanied by the heads of the Secretariat of the Economy, Raquel Buenrostro; Navy, Rafael Ojeda, and National Defense, Luis Cresencio Sandoval, with the governors of Oaxaca and Veracruz, Salomón Jara and Cuitláhuac García.

Magnate Carlos Slim was also present, as a representative of Developer Istmo of Tehuantepec

First of three lines
Although only the Z line, from Salin Cruz to Coatzacoalcos, started this Friday, the project director, Admiral Raymundo Morales, explained at the presidential conference that the FA line from Coatzacoalcos to Palenque (Chiapas) has a progress of 41% and will start operating in June in 2024

Line K, from Ciudad Ixtepec (Oaxaca) to Ciudad Hidalgo (Chiapas), on the border with Guatemala, will enter service in the fourth quarter of 2024.

Morales specified that the project includes the reconstruction of a total of 1,197 kilometers of railway tracks on three tracks.

According to data and estimates, through the freight train, Mexico will have the capacity to transport 1.4 million containers per year from port to port, which will help the development of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, a region with low growth and historically forgotten, in addition to promoting the country’s economy.