Mexico Inaugurates a Train at its Narrowest Point to Compete with the Panama Canal

The president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, inaugurated this Friday the Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (CIIT) train, one of the last emblematic works of his Government and with which he hopes to unite the Pacific Ocean with the Atlantic to compete commercially. with the Panama Canal.

The work will connect the ports of Salina Cruz (Oaxaca, Pacific) with Coatzacoalcos (Veracruz, Atlantic), in a strip of 303 kilometers that will also have two deep-sea ports, cargo trains, highways, three airports in Minatitlán (Veracruz) and Ixtepec and Huatulco (Oaxaca), as well as a gas pipeline and a fiber optic network.

With this new communication route, the first line of three of the Interoceanic Train, Mexico seeks to boost international trade by linking Asia with the east coast of the United States and Europe through that passage, the narrowest point in the country.

 A new commercial option

«Panama is already saturated and we do not want to compete with our Panamanian brothers, we know what it cost them to recover their sovereignty (over the Canal). “It is not about competing with a brother town,” argued López Obrador during the launch of the passenger railway, which has nine stations.

In addition to linking the Pacific with the Atlantic and exploiting the passage commercially, López Obrador intends to build an international trade logistics platform with 10 industrial parks – of about 300 hectares each – and 12 development poles, which will encourage companies to arrive, assemblers and jobs.

Already agreements with Asian countries

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

«It’s about there being other options. Trade has grown a lot in Asia, the Pacific ports, for example Manzanillo (in Colima), are the ones that move the most containers due to the growth of Asia and there are unbeatable conditions to achieve this,” he noted.

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

As with the Mayan Train, inaugurated a week ago in the southeast of the country, the president highlighted that the Interoceanic Corridor represents the return of passenger and freight railways after their privatization in the 1990s.

In his conference, López Obrador said that the CIIT “is a very ambitious area with other purposes.” “And we want to maintain our sovereignty and that is why Mexican companies are the ones that will manage ports and will be in charge of the development poles,” he added.

Although he specified that there will be exceptions, such as “a Danish company (Copenhagen Infrastructure Fund) that is committing an investment of around 10 billion dollars to produce green hydrogen, which is a non-polluting fuel.” In the previous tests, the train route, which will be in charge of the Secretary of the Navy, lasted 6:20 hours.

At the inauguration, López Obrador was accompanied by the heads of the Secretariat of Economy, Raquel Buenrostro; Navy, Rafael Ojeda, and the National Defense, Luis Cresencio Sandoval, in addition to the governors of Oaxaca and Veracruz, Salomón Jara and Cuitláhuac García. The magnate Carlos Slim was also present, as a representative of the Developer of the Istmo of Tehuantepec

 First of three lines

Although only line Z started this Friday, from Salina Cruz to Coatzacoalcos, the director of the project, Admiral Raymundo Morales, explained in the president’s conference that the FA line from Coatzacoalcos to Palenque (Chiapas) has a progress of 41% and will begin operations in June 2024.

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

Morales specified that the project involves the rehabilitation of a total of 1,197 kilometers of railway tracks on the three lines.

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