Maya Train Debt Quadruples Amid Financial Struggles

The Maya Train had debts with suppliers and employees of 2.47 billion pesos in September, a 298% increase or four times more than the 620 million pesos recorded in January of this year, according to the analytical state of the company’s debt and other liabilities accessed by EL UNIVERSAL.

Analysts indicate that, like other companies such as Pemex and CFE, the Maya Train’s debt is due to spending more than it earns.

The project, which is managed by the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena) and located in the Yucatán Peninsula, has required government subsidies since it began operations in December 2023.

EL UNIVERSAL requested from the Maya Train’s Social Communication area the reasons for the increased debt and whether it needed more federal support, but there was no response.

The Mexican Institute for Competitiveness (Imco), Fundar, Greenpeace, and other non-governmental institutions point out that the railway carries environmental irregularities, cost overruns, and lacks transparency in resource management, as the government withheld impact information and the project was developed despite judicial suspensions.

UNAM academic Miguel González says it is public money used for a political decision, even though it was known that the real cost would be higher than the originally estimated 120 billion pesos.

Imco estimates that the total cost of the project was around 500 billion pesos two years ago, while the Superior Audit Office of the Federation (ASF) found irregularities in the project amounting to 3 billion pesos between 2023 and 2024.

“The project is already built, but now the central point is that it will require a strong annual investment to remain in operation. Even during the Peña Nieto administration, it had been warned that it was not profitable and that is why it was canceled,” González said in an interview with this publishing house.

“Now the project will need government support for as long as it functions and while the self-proclaimed Fourth Transformation continues. For that reason, reporting each month on its performance and admitting that it is not improving would be equivalent to recognizing that it was a bad decision by former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, something that Claudia Sheinbaum, as his successor, will never do,” he stated.

Independent specialist Alfredo Nolasco recalls that railway projects have a social purpose, but must be based on economic feasibility studies and technical analyses that guarantee their proper development.

“In this case, those studies were not carried out, and if they were done, the conclusions were ignored and there are the consequences. The subsidies are much greater than what the project can generate on its own and yet it already owes money. From all this, the importance of publishing the crucial information of the project,” Nolasco commented.

The López Obrador government, which was in charge of building the project, published videos every week about the progress of installing sleepers, placing ballast, signage, and other aspects irrelevant to tracking public spending or compliance with regulations and environmental care. The Master Plan, which includes economic, legal, environmental, and social feasibility studies, as well as the Executive Project, are reserved or confidential for alleged national security reasons.

Recognition of the Problem

The federal government only once recognized the problem in a public forum.

Last May, the general director of the Maya Train, General Óscar David Lozano Águila, said that the passenger operation of the project is not profitable, so cargo management is urgently needed to reach its break-even point by 2030.

“No company anywhere in the world dedicated to passengers in a railway system is profitable, that is a reality and a fact. That is why it is the commitment of the Mexican State to complement passenger transportation, and how can it do it? Well, by providing resources. To achieve the break-even point we need cargo,” he said at a seminar of the Mexican Association of Railways.

“It is a fundamental component, that is why we need to recover the cargo infrastructure that already existed with the Isthmus of Tehuantepec railway, which is why we are working intensively with the companies that require those services and the entire route to carry out this project,” he explained.

Since then, federal officials familiar with the project have not offered positions or comments on its situation.

The Railway Transport Regulatory Agency (ARTF) released an update of operational indicators that include those of the Maya Train, whose content indicates that the average monthly traffic was 100,000 passengers during the first half of 2025.

However, the government celebrated that the company exceeded the annual user target of 1.2 million estimated for 2025, while the cargo infrastructure is being developed to operate in April 2026.

The government is advancing in the bidding for other passenger trains to fulfill the campaign promise of reviving this mode of transport.