Calica Wins Legal Fight to Lower Port Value

Playa del Carmen, Mexico — The company Calica has successfully devalued the property value of the Punta Venado port after winning a nullification lawsuit against the Institute for the Evaluation and Appraisal of National Assets (Indaabin). This legal strategy by Calica, which is currently not operating in stone material extraction, is seen as a move to avoid paying millions in outstanding fees to the Federal government for the use of the port concession, with debts dating back more than a decade.

In September of last year, the Eighth Regional Chamber in Mexico City, part of the Federal Court of Administrative Justice, ruled in favor of Calica in a nullification lawsuit. The ruling orders Indaabin to create a new appraisal for the more than eight-hectare terrain occupied by the Punta Venado port, located south of Playa del Carmen.

The original 2010 appraisal had determined the commercial value of the property to be 148 million 355 thousand 946 pesos, according to the sentence consulted by Sol Quintana Roo. Calica argued that this appraisal was illegal because the federal agency responsible for valuing the land had taken into account infrastructure that the company itself had built over the years. This infrastructure had increased the land's value but ultimately belonged to the subsidiary of the US-based Vulcan Materials Company.

The company contended that the land should have been valued in its base state, meaning without the improvements made by the private entity.

In 2023, just as the company was emerging from the total closures initiated by the government of former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, it revived a lawsuit that had been winding its way through the administrative chambers of the Federal Court of Administrative Justice in Mexico City. Calica alleged that the value of the land, which is federally owned due to its coastal location, had been artificially inflated with the purpose of increasing the payments due for the right to use the port facility.

Following litigation that involved various expert witnesses, the court determined that the foreign company was in the right. The sentence states: "The defendant authority has been ordered to issue a new Appraisal Report in the terms indicated in the definitive sentence of February 10, 2016, as well as in the interlocutory sentences on the complaint of November 13, 2019, and November 30, 2022, and as resolved in the present ruling."

This new appraisal is intended to determine the new costs the company must pay for its use of the national asset. However, with this devaluation, the value of the federal patrimony is set to decrease.