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The Mexican government reported Thursday that it is negotiating an agreement with the US construction giant Vulcan to stop a $1.1 billion company lawsuit for preventing him from extract and export materials that it obtains for two decades from the paradisiacal Caribbean zone of the country.
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador pointed out in his morning conference which has given the company until March to respond to an offer that consists of granting it facilities to develop a tourism project in place in exchange for withdrawing the complaint and stopping the extractive activity.
Vulcan Materials, leader in the production of stone aggregates in U.S, operates in Mexico through its subsidiary Calica, which has several concessions in the state Quintana Roo, from where it obtains materials that it ships to the neighboring nation to use them in construction.
In the same act, the Secretary of the Interior, Adam Augusto Lopez Hernandez, 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 the Ministry of Economy of Mexico about the dispute, the details of the possible agreement 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 excerpt from the lawsuit, Vulcan protests “the revocation by Government agencies of the port concession of the claimant’s wholly owned subsidiary, Calica, and the forced closure of the extraction 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 HIM-HER-IT 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.”
