Undoubtedly, these announcements are also connected to the Federation’s Expenditure Budget and the resources assigned to the Secretariat of Infrastructure, Communications and Transportation (SICT). For this reason, below I present a brief diagnosis of the infrastructure works that would be carried out during 2022.
Due to how the SICT budget will be distributed, the area of the country that will receive the greatest amount of resources will be the Central area, due to the Felipe Ángeles International Airport (AIFA) project. According to the commitments, the project should begin operations in mid-March and for this reason it will be the catalyst for various infrastructure works that should begin and be completed this year.
There are at least 10 road projects that will form part of the connectivity infrastructure towards the new air terminal and that are located in the State of Mexico (Edomex) and Mexico City.
Among these projects are: the Atizapán-Atlacomulco highway, the connection to the Circuito Exterior Mexiquense, the Tultepec highway, the project known as Conexión Oriente, the toll-free road in Tonanitla, the rehabilitation of 2.65 kilometers of the road to San Jerónimo, the viaduct elevated La Raza-Santa Clara, the Siervo de la Nación metropolitan axis, the expansion of the Buenavista-Cuautitlán Suburban Train and, finally, the extension of lines I and IV of the Edomex Mexibús.
It is worth mentioning that a large part of these projects will have significant private participation, in order to guarantee their completion in a timely manner.
However, a few days before its inauguration, there are still some issues to be resolved. The new airport is technically complete, the control tower, as well as the building that will receive the buses that would transfer people from the airport in Mexico City and Toluca to Santa Lucía. However, many of the works have uneven progress and there are even some that still do not have a public bidding process or a work schedule.
On the other hand, although at the federal level there is already a defined budget, the delay in the approval of the Edomex budget initiative and the release of some rights of way have slowed down the progress of work on certain projects.
Now, taking up the plan of the SE and according to what was said in its presentation, the reactivation strategy considers, among other objectives, promoting the relocation of factories in the south of the country, investing in the infrastructure projects of the Oaxaca Plan and strengthening the local supply chains for “strategic sectors”. Among all this, the focus on the South-Southeast area of the country clearly stands out.
In my opinion, this approach has had an impact on the observed performance of the South-Southeast highway infrastructure. In fact, traffic and revenue have increased since the end of 2021. This fact certainly leads me to believe that the economic revival in this area, in particular, is heading in the right direction.
South-Southeast highways have recorded the fastest recovery. Cumulative records for the first nine months of 2020, compared to the same period in 2019, show that traffic and revenue are already above their pre-pandemic levels (1.1% in terms of traffic and 8.5% in revenue).
This impulse comes from the entry into operation of new communication routes (New Puente la Unidad in Campeche), by new federal and state infrastructure projects in Chiapas (Tuxtla-San Cristóbal de las Casas highway), Oaxaca (Barranca Larga-Ventanilla highway and Mitla-Tehuantepec), Quintana Roo (Mayan Train) and Tabasco (Dos Bocas Refinery).
In the rest of the country the situation is different; that is, we have not observed the same dynamism or the same speed of recovery. In the North zone, the recovery responds particularly to cargo vehicle traffic, whose destination is the border with the United States. Furthermore, I would expect this behavior to continue in the coming years with the multi-year infrastructure plan approved by the Senate of our neighbor to the north.