Speeding Up Bureaucracy

Along the Mexico-United States border, there are 54 crossings and international bridges where the majority of commercial trade between the two countries takes place.

International trade between the United States and Mexico has intensified since the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement in the 90s, and today reaches the levels of more than $300 trillion annually. Approximately 70 percent of the trading is done by truck, 8.4 percent by railroad, 16.4 percent by seaway, and the remaining 3.9 percent by other modes of transportation.

Consequently, there is a need to build new international bridges and crossings on the Mexico-U.S. border in the next six years to avoid congestion or get ahead of future growth in demand. However, the planning and construction of international bridges needs to be done at top speed, with the objective of making the area between Mexico and the United States more competitive on the international level.

The average time it takes to implement a bi-national infrastructure project on the Mexico-U.S. border is 15 years.

If we want to make the border area more competitive, we need to reduce the time of implementation. For this to happen, it is necessary to overhaul the bureaucratic processes in both countries. We will need to reduce the number of steps to follow by forming a group of dedicated experts on both sides of the border, and we must be able to reach an agreement on an ongoing work program that would allow for the modification of the processes required for the implementation of infrastructure projects. We will have to review allocations of the four levels of the United States government and of the three levels of the Mexican government, with the aim of establishing bi-national communication to avoid wasting time on the critical path of project implementation. We will also have to prevent the electoral processes on both sides of the border from slowing the pace of negotiations and/or construction through the formation of technical teams that can monitor the process. Finally, we will need to simplify the bidding processes on both sides of the border in order to shorten the timeframes of construction and pre-construction.

By improving communication between the two governments, simplifying formalities, reassessing the functions of government, and preventing the electoral process from slowing down projects, we will be able to accelerate the implementation of bi-national infrastructure on the Mexico-U.S. border, and thus make this area more competitive.