Fonatur will invest 805 million in Cancun and Cozumel between 2021 and 2023

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The works include a new wastewater treatment plant for Cancun, which will expand the capacity so that the hotel zone can serve the new hotels that are already under construction.

Cancun, QRoo.- The federal government, through the National Tourism Promotion Fund will invest between 2021 and 2023 the amount of 805 million pesos for maintenance works in Cancun and the Cozumel Marina.

This is the Maintenance Program of the Integrally Planned Center and Integral Tourism Project of the Caribbean 2021-2023, which consists of providing infrastructure and equipment to both tourist poles through urbanization works (pluvial and sanitary drainage, public lighting, roads), works of head (wastewater treatment plants), urban and tourist equipment works (public areas and urban furniture), landscape architecture and urban design (irrigation network and green areas).
Urban infrastructure for Cancun

The program includes the construction of a new “Wastewater Treatment Plant for Cancun as an optimization measure, for which the costs corresponding to studies and projects necessary to carry out the work, as well as its supervision, were determined.” It reads a document published among the investment projects of the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit for 2021.

The programming of federal resources for this specific work radically modifies the position expressed in mid-2020 by the director of Fonatur himself, Rogelio Jiménez Pons, who openly opposed the continued construction of more hotels in Cancun, speaking specifically against the Grand Island and the RIU Riviera Cancún with 3,000 and 500 rooms respectively, he argues that there is no installed capacity in terms of provision of basic services for more hotel infrastructure.

“Fonatur cannot expand the sewage treatment plants that generate the more than 30,000 rooms that operate in the hotel zone of Cancun, so this was one of the factors that motivated the review to which the Grand Island and the RIU Riviera Cancun since 2019, ”he said.

The official even assured that if the construction of both hotels were not stopped, Fonatur would withdraw from Cancun, which would imply that it would stop maintaining the destination; even though the Grand Island hotel has the support of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador since this project was presented at one of his morning conferences at the National Palace.

Currently, Fonatur has three wastewater treatment plants: Pok Ta Pok with the capacity to treat 245 liters per second; Gucumatz for 200 liters per second and El Rey for 100 liters per second. The total capacity is up to 545 liters per second, which represents the wastewater treatment of 15,445 rooms, that is, less than half of the rooms that operate in Cancun.

Marina Cozumel.

In 2008, Fonatur laid the first stone of the Marina Cozumel, which at the time was projected to be able to attract 191 million dollars in private investment in a first stage, in addition to allowing the arrival of 36,000 new foreign visitors per year, with foreign exchange estimated at 45 million dollars annually.

The complex has a capacity for 333 boats, three hotel lots with permits to develop up to 576 rooms, 469 condominium homes, and 55 residences.

Fonatur’s investment was in the order of 376 million pesos and the potential to attract investment was estimated at 500 million dollars.

The investment proposed by Fonatur for the next three years is not specified in the 2021-2023 maintenance plan, but mention is made of pruning, irrigation, and conservation of green areas; conservation and maintenance of roads and public spaces; operation and maintenance of public lighting, among others.

Source: eleconomista.com.mx

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