Military companies ask for megasubsidy

Mexico City.- The four parastatal companies of the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena) requested operating and salary subsidies for 2024 that total 22,728 million pesos, an amount that exceeds the combined budget of the Secretariats of the Interior and Foreign Relations for the next anus.

These are the companies Tren Maya, Aerolínea del Estado Mexicano, Grupo Aeroportuario, Ferroviario, de Servicios Auxiliares y Conexicas Olmeca-Maya-Mexica (GAFSACOMM) and the Felipe Angeles International Airport (AIFA), except for the latter, all were registered for the first time. once in a draft Federal Expenditure Budget (PEF).

Tren Maya requested 5,937 million pesos in subsidies for current expenses, including 937 million for salaries, in addition to the 120 billion pesos necessary to continue with the works.

The train, already under full control of Sedena, does not yet expect to have its own revenue in 2024. At this point, it is estimated that construction spending will be close to 500 billion pesos.

GAFSACOMM will control 12 international airports and requested 15,172 million pesos from the PEF, of which 626 million are to pay its staff.

Although it was not registered in the PEF for 2023, GAFSACOMM is already receiving money this year, as it is in the process of assigning a contract of at least 53 million pesos for fuel management at its airports with money from the PEF.

According to the rules of this tender, the airports of Tulum and Apodaca, Nuevo León – until now dedicated to private flights – are under military control, while Aeropuertos y Servicios Auxiliares (ASA) is in the process of transferring those of Puebla, Nuevo Laredo, Nogales, Campeche, Ciudad Victoria, Chetumal, Ixtepec, Tamuín, Palenque and Uruapan.

By number of terminals, GAFSACOMM will be similar to the three private airport groups in the country, but its passenger traffic will be much lower, due to the size of the cities it serves.

The AIFA is not part of GAFSACOMM. In March 2024 it will complete two years of operations, but it will still not be self-sufficient, which is why it requested a subsidy of 1,500 million pesos, 79 percent more than what was requested in 2023.

Of that amount, the AIFA – which estimates its own income of 1,251 million pesos in 2024 – will use 464 million to pay salaries.

The most optimistic military company is the new airline, which will adopt the name Mexicana de Aviación.

Sedena estimates that it will have its own income of 8,220 million pesos, which is why it only requested 119 million pesos from the PEF. In 2023, however, at least 4 billion pesos have already been allocated to contract aircraft leasing.

The Secretary of the Navy (Semar), which already controls the Mexico City International Airport (AICM), also requested a subsidy of 1.5 billion in 2024, and ASA is in the process of delivering six other terminals, for which it created the company. Casiopea Airport Group, which does not appear in the 2024 PEF.