The consensus from NSAM's readers: Wait for the Castros to move on before taking Cuba seriously.
By Jon Tonti
A mere 230 miles from Miami, Havana’s ultra-attractive geographic positioning continues to push Cuba on to the radar of ‘what ifs’ when looking at explosive possibilities in the Nearshore services sector.
But before floating into dream land – let’s review the facts: Cuba’s BPO market today is nearly non-existent and the Cuban government is not focused on jump-starting it. Despite an intelligent workforce that is increasingly exposed to private-run business, Cuba still has a long way to go to become viable for global services. We drew upon our pool of experts and did some poking around of our own to find that Cuba lacks a BPO scene because of the Cuban government’s preference for other industries, a weak technological infrastructure, a dearth of transparency, and political and workforce uncertainty.
Economic Slowdown Won’t Stop IT Expansion in Brazil
May 3rd, 2012
By Luke Bujarski
Last week’s Bloomberg Latin America Investing conference in New York City was a sobering reminder of Brazil’s precarious economic balancing act hinging on foreign investment, consumption, government stimulus, and inflated commodity prices. Yet, despite mixed signals over the future macro outlook, Brazil’s IT services industry will continue to rage forward. Antonio Gil president of BRASSCOM shrugged off pragmatic panel concerns with confidence, reassuring the audience that IT will expand aggressively at ten percent annually, to reach $210 billion USD by 2020.
PRONicaragua Number One Investment Promotion Agency: World Bank
April 27th, 2012
PRONicaragua stood out with the best results among all investment promotion agencies in the world in the 2012 Global Investment Promotion Benchmarking, recently published by the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA).
Among the 189 institutions evaluated, PRONicaragua was the only institution to achieve a rating of “best practice,” the highest distinction awarded by the study in each of the three evaluations implemented. This edition marks the first time in history that a non-member country of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) receives such recognition.
Robert Whyte, the World Bank’s Project Manager for the GIPB 2012, mentioned that with FDI levels only slowly recovering post-crisis, it is more important than ever for government agencies to be highly responsive to the needs of potential investors as they search for new investment locations, adding that …
By Luke Bujarski
Distinguishing between domestic and export driven business is becoming increasingly important to vendors operating in LatAm. How are Brazilian banks outsourcing their back office? Why is Mexico’s manufacturing industry rebounding and what technology solutions are producers looking for? Is Colombia’s telecoms market the next big opportunity? Likewise, multinational enterprises will be looking for those service providers best suited to support their specific industry, as they invest in these oft complex markets.
First CEO Summit of the Americas Yields Ideas…But Results?
April 26th, 2012Opportunities to deepen ties ranging from trade and investments to education and security
The First CEO Summit of the Americas wrapped up on April 14, 2012 with calls for greater cooperation among Western Hemisphere nations on matters ranging from trade and investment to education, science and technology and security, in order to boost prosperity from Canada to Chile.
At the end of the conference, held ahead of the 6th Summit of the Americas, Presidents Dilma Rousseff of Brazil, Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia and Barack Obama of the United States participated in a roundtable discussion in front of an audience that included more than 700 top executives from many of the Western Hemisphere’s leading companies.
After praising the economic and social progress achieved by countries such as Brazil and Colombia over the past decade, Obama said there were many fields where countries in this hemisphere could collaborate fruitfully. “We’ve never felt …
India Losing Cost Advantage Over Latin America
April 23rd, 2012
By Robert L. Scheier
Hourly labor costs in the Latin American Nearshore are still slightly higher than in traditional low-cost leader India. But other factors such as faster time to market and simplified communications often still make the Nearshore the better choice, according to speakers at the Nearshore Nexus outsourcing conference in New York City last week.
Uribe Declares New Day for Nearshore at Nexus
April 19th, 2012
Uribe highlighted positive social, political and business developments in the Latin American/Caribbean region
Kirk Laughlin, CEO of Nearshore Americas, kicked off today’s Nearshore Nexus Conference at the Crowne Plaza in New York City by stating nearshore outsourcing has gone from “novel to mainstream.” Laughlin promised that conference speakers would illustrate how outsourcing destinations in Latin America and the Caribbean are “no longer in the shadow of India or China,” but have instead become vibrant providers of sophisticated IT and business outsourcing services in their own right. The first speaker, former President of the Republic of Colombia Mr. Alvaro Uribe, delivered on that promise.
Production in Brazil Almost as Expensive as Europe
April 18th, 2012By Filipe Pacheco
It might be surprising and paradoxical at the same time, but when it comes to business competitiveness, Brazil can be almost as expensive as developed European countries. A study recently published by KPMG shows that producing in the country is almost as expensive as doing it in places such as the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. According to the research, called Competitive Alternatives, it is more expensive to produce in Brazil than in any of the other of the so-called BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) plus Mexico, which are some of the fastest growing economies in the world.
By Clayton Browne
There is a growing consensus among international economists that Argentina’s decade-long economic boom is rapidly becoming an out-of-control inflationary spiral. Real inflation has grown at 20+% annually for over three years, and the Argentine government is clearly in denial or even cover-up mode regarding the situation.
Many businesses in Argentina are already struggling from the double-digit inflation, especially industries like outsourcing that rely largely on income from outside of Argentina, and things are only going to get worse as most sources expect Argentina’s inflation rate to approach 25% in 2012.
Why is IBM Tying up with Brazil’s Most Famous Billionaire?
April 12th, 2012
By Filipe Pacheco
The encounter of two giants: one of them is IBM, a global IT provider, and the other is Eike Batista, the richest man in Brazil and the commander of a corporate empire in the country. Together, they closed a deal that includes the construction of an industrial tech center and the supply of outsourcing services of around US$ 1 billion in a ten year interval.
