Reuters news agency quoted an official at Mexico’s Ministry of Communications and Transport as saying that the winner of the tender to build and operate the planned US$5bn Punta Colonet Pacific coast container port in Baja California would be announced by the end of Q309. Manuel Rodríguez said the concession would be won by the bidder offering to handle the most containers, since selecting by the overall value of investment promised would have been ‘interminable’ to calculate. The ministry wants the port to have the capacity to handle 5-6mn containers a year, and will receive cargo coming from Asia and largely destined for the US market, relieving the congestion of US West Coast ports. The port will create an estimated 80,000 local jobs, and be linked by freight rail to the US midwest. The entry point to the US has yet to be decided, but is expected to be El Paso, Yuma or Nogales. On current plans Punta Colonet could begin operations in 2012 with capacity to handle 2mn twenty-feet equivalent units (TEUs) annually, and would be handling 6mn TEUs by 2020. Rodríguez had earlier explained that four different concessions are on offer: one for a container terminal; another for basic port infrastructure; another to build two railway lines connecting to the US; and a fourth for the management of the electromagnetic spectrum to operate the trains.

BMI’s newly released Mexico Freight Transport Report notes that with improving intermodal links we are forecasting average annual maritime freight growth of 4.2% per annum (due in part to the increased movement of cargo through Mexican ports to avoid congestion in US ports). Over all modes, Mexican freight growth will average 4.7% in 2009-2013, ahead of GDP expansion of 3.6% a year. BMI concludes that the value of the Mexican transport and communications sector will rise to US$184.6bn by 2013, representing 11.5% of the country’s total GDP.

During the presidential election campaign in 2006, Calderón spoke of trying to emulate the big transport infrastructure investment surges in European economies like Ireland and Spain, which in his view supported their strong growth rates in the first half of this decade. BMI rates Mexico’s regulatory and competitive environments highly in relation to other regional markets. In this report, in fact, we set the country’s overall freight rating score at 51.4 (out of a maximum of 100).

The transport and communications sector employed 1.90mn people, or 4.6% of the labour force, in 2008.

We see that figure rising to 2.08mn by 2013, although as a proportion of the labour force it will remain constant at 4.6%.