The high cost of energy and the fiscal deficit are two of the problems that worry companies in Costa Rica, who also face an uncertain political scenario, a few weeks to go before a second round of elections.
With a month and a half to go before a second round of elections, Costa Rican businessmen highlighted a difficult year in terms of job creation and attraction of new investments.
The proposal presented by the union of Guatemalan businessmen to the Morales administration contemplates, among other things, reforming the judicial system and establishing a scheme of fiscal certainty.
After2017 closed with a deterioration in business expectations, the Coordinating Committee of Agricultural, Commercial, Industrial and Financial Associations (Cacif), has proposed to the authorities of the Morales administration an action plan that includes four lines of work.
The value of the investments that the country has lost in the last five years, has been estimated at $1 billion, due to factors such as high production costs and poor infrastructure, which is having a deteriorating effect on competitiveness.
A study prepared by the CABI at the request of the union of exporting companies concludes that both Guatemalan and foreign companies have opted for neighboring markets such as Nicaragua, Honduras and Mexico in which to make their investments, instead of Guatemala. Production costs, the minimum wage, higher than in other countries of the region, and the deteriorated road infrastructure are some of the factors that have impacted the loss of the country's competitiveness with respect to similar markets in the region.
Business management is the resource which determines the success or failure of a business, and the quality of that management determines, unfailingly, the market.
EDITORIAL
In Costa Ricaastate run bankand anagricultural cooperativehave once again been rescued from insolvency and the mismanagement of their managers, using, as it would not have been possible any other way, money belonging to taxpayers.
Insecurity and excessive red tape remain the main obstacles to the growth of exports, which have lost momentum in the last four years.
From the Survey on Business Competitiveness by Fusades:
FUSADES has carried out the "Business Competitiveness Survey" every year since 2011, interviewing more than 430 micro small, medium and large enterprises.The surveys help to statistically demonstrate the challenges and opportunities in improving growth and employment generation, the only institution in the region that makes such an effort.
In El Salvador, the decision taken by the Sanchez Ceren administration not to attend the main business event in the country reveals either disinclination, inability to govern, or simple political manichaeism.
EDITORIAL
Maybe it is a persistence of visualizing the world as it was in the last century, dividing it into two antagonistic parties, capital on the one hand and labour on the other.
The real entrepreneurs and CEOs do not need a state official, who will never be an entrepreneur, to tell them how to run a company and increase revenues.
EDITORIAL
In Costa Rica, the government continues to believe that state officials can show employers how to do their job and how to generate wealth.
Having failed in its task of promoting favorable conditions in infrastructure, training and availability of human resources, access to credit and facilitating paperwork for the creation and growth of private enterprises, swift and effective commercial trade justice, the pachydermic state apparatus in Costa Rica continues to create bureaucratic organizations to "develop production" and obliterates others that yesterday were touted as the miracle food for the country's development. The new invention, this time from the Solis administration, is the Productive Development Agency, for Innovation and Added Value which of course already has a corresponding and always imaginative short name: FOMPRODUCE.
Costa Rican industrialists warn that increasing the minimum wage in the private sector by 34% will cause more unemployment and encourage more companies to operate unofficially.
The bill concerning the minimum wage will endanger plans for new hires in the private sector, and its passage into law could cause more informality and more unemployment. The proposal aims to increase the minimum wage by 34% for unskilled employees in the private sector.
Businesses are asking the Executive to reactivate the National Commission against Smuggling to protect issues such as competitiveness, intellectual property rights and the rights of consumers and entrepreneurs.
When the criminal customs fraud structure in Guatemala known as La Linea fell, the National Commission Against Contraband (Conacon) ceased to be operational.
Businessmen have stated their categorical opposition to statements made by a government official that confuse extortion with the funding of organized crime.
The statements by the Technical Secretary of the Presidency of El Salvador, Roberto Lorenzana, against companies in the country that suffer from extortion caused a strong reaction from the private sector, four days after Industrias La Constancia publicly announced that it was suspending operation of its plants because of increasing insecurity and violence.
Traders, industrialists and entrepreneurs in the agro sector disagree with the position of the main private sector union over the negotiation of new taxes.
Three business unions have ratified their opposition to new taxes in Costa Rica and have made known their total lack of empathy with the way the Uccaep, an organization that unites most of the unions in the private sector, has dealt with the Solis administration over tax issues, the negotiation of a shareholder register proposed by the government and other aspects related to the fiscal problems affecting the country.
From 16 to 18 of November businessmen and government representatives from Latin America will be gathering together at the IX Forum of the Americas on Competitiveness.
From a statement issued by om the Chamber of Industry of Guatemala:
Guatemala, September 22, 2015.- The public and private sectors of the Latin American region will be meeting in Guatemala from 16 to 18 November at the IX Forum of the Americas on Competitiveness, the most important business exchange space which will have more than 1000 attendees.
The growth rate of investment in fixed capital and company stocks went from 12% in the third quarter of 2013 to 3% in the last quarter of 2014.
There are now five consecutive quarters of deceleration in the growth rate of investment by firms in the country, according to data presented by the Central Bank of Costa Rica.
The economist, Manuel Zúñiga, told Nacion.com that "...
Employers say the 18% decline in exports in February 2015 compared to the same month in 2014 is not due to temporary factors, but to a continued loss of competitiveness.
Excessive bureaucracy and the high cost of energy and other factors related to production are part of the problems affecting the private sector and are causing a reduction of exports, according to the president of the National Chamber of Agriculture and Agribusiness, Juan Rafael Lizano.
Legal certainty, delays in the approval procedures and government debts are some of the concerns employers passed on to the Varela administration.
From a statement issued by the Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture (CCIAP):
Issues related to national and corporate events, which include economic growth and legal certainty, were some of the points raised during the meeting between entrepreneurs of the Board of the Chamber of Commerce, Industries and Agriculture of Panama headed by its President José Luis Ford, and the president of the Republic of Panama, Juan Carlos Varela Rodríguez.
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