Mexico will sell its presidential jet to Tajikistan for $92 million, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has announced, bragging that he is keeping an old campaign promise of austerity, AFP reports.

“I’ve never flown it, but I’d be embarrassed, frankly, to use that plane,” whose maintenance costs “contrary to Republican austerity,” he said.

Once the money is paid, the Tajik government has ten days to deliver the Boeing Dreamliner 787-8 to the capital, Dushanbe.

The plane was purchased by former President Felipe Calderon (2006-2012) for a total of $218 million and was also used by his successor, Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018).

The radical left-wing nationalist president believed that his predecessors behaved like “little pharaohs”.

He himself has made only five trips abroad in nearly four and a half years in office, four to the United States and a tour to Central America and Cuba in early 2022.

In January, the head of state explained that he could not go to the Latin American summit in Buenos Aires because he had to monitor the progress of the Maya train, his megaproject in the Yucatan Peninsula, which he wants to open in December. .

The summit marked the return of Brazilian President Lula, who was absent from the meeting in Buenos Aires.

In Obrador’s absence, Mexico, one of the world’s 20 largest economies, is represented abroad by Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard, his likely successor.

The money from the sale will be used to build two hospitals in the southwestern Mexican states of Guerrero and Oaxaca, two of Mexico’s poorest regions, the president said.