Limon

MEXICO PORTS

Mexico has some 10,000 kilometers of coastline but few navigable rivers and no good natural harbors. The country's 2,900 kilometers of navigable rivers and coastal canals play only aminor role in the transportation system. In the early 1990s, Mexico's seventy-five maritime ports and nine river ports handled 65 percent of imports and 70 percent of nonpetroleum exports. The flow offreight through Mexican ports exceeded 163 million tons of cargo in 1990, representing 31 percent of total freight carried by all modes. The five largest ports--Tampico, Veracruz, Guaymas, Mazatlán,and Manzanillo--handled 80 percent of Mexico's ocean freight.
Veracruz is an important port for general cargo, especially goods headed to and from Mexico City. The port of Tampico primarily handlespetroleum and petroleum products. Other important seaports include Coatzacoalcos on the Gulf of Mexico coast and Acapulco on the Pacific. Two new Pacific ports--Pichilingue and Topolobampo--were builtin the early 1990s, and another was built on the Gulf of Mexico coast at Progreso, in the state of Yucatán. Between 1989 and 1994, some US$700 million was spent on port development, more than half ofthat amount provided by the private sector.
Mexico's system of state-owned ports is administered by Mexican Ports (Puertos Mexicanos--PM), a decentralized government agency established in 1989 tooversee the rationalization and streamlining of port operations. To increase the quality of service in the shipping sector and thereby enhance Mexico's export performance, the government announced in1992 that it would sell management concessions for nine ports--including Acapulco, Lázaro Cárdenas, and Manzanillo--to private buyers. In 1994 ownership of the ports of Altamira, Acapulco, Guaymas, andTampico passed to the private sector. Mexico expected to complete construction by 1996 of a 437-kilometer coastal canal between Matamoros and Tampico, intended to connect with the United States...