During the presidential campaign in 2018, Lopez Obrador pledged to sell the plane and fly commercially instead, and he followed through on that promise only days after taking office.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) has promised to fund a crackdown on migrants to Mexico from Central America with proceeds from the sale of the presidential plane and other aircraft used by the last government.
The move comes after Mexico and the United States reached a deal last Friday that averted escalating U.S. import tariffs of 5% on Mexican goods in exchange for Mexico doing more to halt Central American migration to the U.S.
“About how much this plan is going to cost, let me say, we have the budget,” Lopez Obrador said at his regular daily news conference on Wednesday. “It would come out of what we’re going to receive from the sale of the luxurious presidential plane.”
AMLO said the price of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, which was originally purchased for $218 million for his predecessor, Enrique Peña Nieto, would start at $150m, citing a United Nations evaluation.
During the presidential campaign in 2018, Lopez Obrador pledged to sell the plane and fly commercially instead, and he followed through on that promise only days after taking office.
The plane has been on sale for the past several months and has been sitting in a California warehouse. AMLO said he expected the sale to close this week and that funds from the sale of the plane would be put toward the deployment of the newly formed national guard to its southern border with Guatemala.
Additional funding would come from the 60 government-owned planes and 70 helicopters that Mexico is also seeking to sell.
Source: Reuters