For more than a year, the Mexican Government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador has tried to sell the presidential plane used by its predecessors, considering it an excessive and unnecessary expense (he uses commercial flights). However, it has not been successful and is now considering other more unusual options.
López Obrador explained this Friday at a press conference that one of the five ways reviewed by the Government to close the sale is to offer six million tickets at a price of around 26 dollars [500 Mexican pesos] each in a raffle that would be Organized by the National Lottery Office.
"It would be given to the one who will win the plane already included an operation service of one or two years," said the president, who clarified in any case that he is "talking about options nothing more."
He added that they would still need to figure out how to make that raffle, how many tickets a single person or a single company could buy, and under what conditions the plane would be delivered "so that it will not be wasted."
The Government has made several auctions of assets confiscated with its so-called Institute to Return the Stolen to the People, but the idea of a raffle open to the public had not been handled before.
The Mexican president was emphatic that there are still four other possibilities on the table.
Those include selling the plane directly to a buyer. At the conference, López Obrador has indicated that there is already an interested and willing person, but that so far he has offered 125 million dollars when the valuation of the plane, carried out in collaboration with the UN, is 130 million dollars.
He commented that they will wait to see if in the next few days the offer changes, in which case that option would be the first.
Another alternative to get rid of the aircraft is a barter with the US Government, obtaining the value of the aircraft in kind: "The equivalent in medical equipment - ambulances, CT scans, X-ray equipment - everything we need in public hospitals" .
The other two mechanisms under analysis are renting the plane for hours (estimated that there is already a precedent, which charges $ 70,000, but that the amount would not be so high), or sell it to a group of coalition companies.
"In those cases we will use the same policy to improve hospital care, so that this is also for medical equipment," said the president.
This week the Government announced that the presidential plane will return from California, where it has been on display for sale since December 2018, to continue offering it from Mexican territory.
Telemundo News revealed on Tuesday that, among the costs of having the aircraft parked in the United States, Mexican authorities have paid up to $ 5,000 just to wash the aircraft and that the total expenditure is around 1.5 million dollars.