The Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, defended this Tuesday that the 13 plants that he bought from the Spanish energy company Iberdrola for almost 6,000 million dollars “are not scrap” in the face of criticism from the private sector and analysts.
They are not scrap (the Iberdrola plants purchased). There is a good cartoon, but I’m not going to put it here, whose are the scraps. That is why the operation was very good, if we propose to build these 13 plants, it takes us 10 years”,
argued the president in his daily press conference.
“We consider that it was a very good decision and I think that it is convenient for both parties,” he asserted.
His statements come after López Obrador announced last week a “new nationalization” of the electrical industry after buy 12 combined cycle plants and a wind farm to Iberdrolaa Spanish company that he has constantly denounced and accused of “looting the country.”
López Obrador justified calling the acquisition “nationalization” because the participation in electricity generation of the company will grow from 39% to 55%. Federal Electricity Commission (CFE)state enterprise.
That is why I am talking about nationalization and, with what we are doing, for next year we calculate that we are going to have, even with the age of some plants of the Federal Commission, we are going to reach 65% in all the generation of electrical energy ”,
exposed.
But the purchase has aroused criticism from analysts and from the Center for Economic Studies of the Private Sector (Ceesp), which on Monday called the acquisition of the plants a “bad decision” because “it entails future maintenance costs, which will be difficult to solve.” .
The Ceesp, which depends on the country’s business leadership, also considered “a negative sign towards investment” in Mexico that the operation occurs after “the president’s own verbal attacks on Iberdrola without any objective evidence.”
On the other hand, private sector analysts, such as the Fitch agency, considered the operation positive for Ibedrola because it allows it to advance in its decarbonization goals.
Even so, López Obrador pointed out that these plants “have an average useful life three times higher than the average useful life of the plants of the Federal Electricity Commission.”
When they talk about scrap, let’s take into account that these plants, the oldest, were built 40 years ago. The average is 18 years of life of these plants”,
held.
The president, who has implemented a nationalist energy policy, reiterated that the former governments wanted the CFE plants “to become scrap metal” so that the state company “would abandon the electricity market and the entire market would remain in the hands of individuals.”
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