President Andrés Manuel López Obrador says the U.S. government has offered to help finance a proposed train line for Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula.
López Obrador said late Saturday that U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross conveyed a message from President Donald Trump saying that “they are willing to invest and to help build the Mayan Train and other infrastructure in the southeast.”
The U.S. has pledged $4.8 billion in development aid to bolster southern Mexico’s economy in hopes of lessening the need for poor residents to migrate to the U.S. A part of that could presumably go toward financing the train.
The $7.2 billion project being pushed by Lopez Obrador would connect popular tourist havens like Cancun with less visited archaeological sites such as Palenque.
The president has said it would be financed over six years through public and private investment, including tourism taxes that currently net about $370 million a year.
