AMLO offers US construction company Vulcan Materials a tourism project to stop billion dollar lawsuit

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López Obrador pointed out in his morning conference that he has given the company until March to respond to an offer that consists of granting it facilities to develop a tourism project in the place in exchange for withdrawing the complaint and stopping the extractive activity.

The Mexican government reported on Thursday that it is negotiating an agreement with the US construction giant Vulcan to stop a $1.1 billion lawsuit from the company for preventing it from extracting and exporting materials that it has obtained for two decades from the paradisiacal Caribbean zone of the country.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador pointed out in his morning conference that he has given the company until March to respond to an offer that consists of granting it facilities to develop a tourism project in the place in exchange for withdrawing the complaint and stopping the extractive activity.

Vulcan Materials, a leader in the production of stone aggregates in the United States, operates in Mexico through its subsidiary Calica, which has several concessions in the state of Quintana Roo, from where it obtains materials that it ships to the neighboring nation for use in construction.

In the same act, the Secretary of the Interior, Adán Augusto López Hernández, specified that there are three properties, two of which are in operation, one with a concession without a time limit and the other with an expired permit, while the authorization to operate in the third is about to end.

Reuters had no immediate comment from the company or Mexico’s economy ministry on the dispute, details of the potential deal or the lawsuit.

However, there is a record on the website of the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) of a 2019 claim pending resolution for 500 million dollars from the US company against the Mexican State.

According to the lawsuit excerpt, Vulcan protests “the revocation by government agencies of the port concession of the plaintiff’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Calica, and the forced closure of mining operations ” of two facilities in the area. .

The president, who reported that the area involved occupies 4,200 hectares near the turquoise coast of Quintana Roo, has threatened to resort to the UN and denounced “destruction” of the territory for this case, although on Thursday he qualified his position. “I hope that an agreement is reached, which is going to be the best.”

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Source: poresto.net, eleconomista.com.mx

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