Honduras’ Deputy Foreign Minister Alden Rivera announced that former United States president Bill Clinton and Mexican businessman Carlos Slim will travel to Honduras on November 4-5, 2010 to help encourage private investment.
Honduras is among the most severe in Latin America. Approximately 53% of the population is rural, and it is estimated that 75% of the rural population lives below the poverty line, unable to meet basic needs.
The country still has high rates of population growth, infant mortality, child malnutrition and illiteracy. These and other social and economic factors reflect its status as the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, after Haiti.
“The visit is aimed at promoting the country as a tourism destination to the world, thereby attracting foreign investors,” said Mr. Rivera.
Mr. Slim is listed by Forbes Magazine as the world’s richest person, with a net worth estimated at US$60.6 billion.
Mr. Clinton oversees the William J. …
What Are Guatemala and Honduras Doing to Generate Labor Supply?
June 30th, 2010
By Tarun George
It’s on the minds of virtually every buyer who has long-term visions of outsourcing to Latin America – will there be enough qualified people to go around? This is acutely true when we consider the contact center industry, for which it takes years to build English competency.
Two rising powers in Central America outsourcing – Guatemala and Honduras – are faced with exactly that scenario. As more providers arrive, pressure for qualified and bilingual workers is increasing. Which begs the question: What is being done to anticipate that demand, and will it be enough? Get the answers here.
U.S. Says Time has Come to Allow Honduras Back into OAS
May 7th, 2010WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. government said on Thursday it was time for Honduras to be readmitted to the Organization of American States, which suspended the Central American nation after a coup last year.
The creation this week of a truth commission to investigate events surrounding the June coup that ousted former President Manuel Zelaya was a sign that his elected successor, President Porfirio Lobo, was committed to national reconciliation, a U.S. State Department official said.
“It is time for them to be reintegrated,” Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Craig Kelly told Reuters at a Latin American investment summit.
The OAS is a hemispheric forum that groups all democratic countries in the Americas.
Several Latin American governments, including Venezuela and Brazil, have yet to recognize Lobo’s legitimacy as president, while international human rights groups say attacks on Zelaya supporters have continued since Lobo took office in January.
Kelly said …
Five Years Later, CAFTA Influence on Pro Services Outsourcing is Hotly Debated
February 16th, 2010
By Tarun George
The Dominican Republic-Central American Free trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA) remains a controversial treaty five years after its contentious passage, yet many experts believe that the agreement is only just beginning to show its real impact.
CAFTA-DR forms one of the largest free trade blocs in the Americas, joining together Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic. Bilateral trade between the US and the CAFTA countries is valued at over $45 billion annually. But nearly five years on from when it was first implemented in the US, what effect has it had on the trade in services? NearshoreAmericas is taking a look at whether CAFTA has in fact enabled a more productive relationship between US customers and the professional services outsourcing industry in Central America.
SOURCE: DAILYCALLER.COM
With Porfirio Lobo assuming the presidency of Honduras, its citizens formally turn the page on the political crisis triggered by Manuel Zelaya’s removal from office in June 2009. It is time for the international community to do the same. Honduras’ fragile economy and its citizens have paid a high price in recent months. They must be given a chance at a new beginning.
President Obama must seize the initiative and provide full support to Honduras, which has traditionally been a firm U.S. ally. Furthermore, he must pro-actively encourage others nations to extend diplomatic recognition to Honduras’ new government, restore international aid and lift all sanctions.
The formal resolution to the status of former President Zelaya has been largely addressed. He has been given safe passage to the Dominican Republic whose President Leonel Fernandez brokered the deal. Furthermore, Mr. Lobo was given a popular mandate by Hondurans in a free and …
The Rising Value of the Secondary Nearshore City
January 28th, 2010The natural belief for most US nearshoring customers is that the big cities – Bogota, Guatemala City, Mexico City, Santiago among others – are the optimal destinations to establish services relationships.
The reality, as we are seeing more clearly than ever, is that the big cities are not the only option, and that prospective buyers should look very closely at some of the rising secondary cities across Latin America. Many of them have international airports, are located near a major university and are eager to welcome new business investment. The other critical factor is there is often less wage pressure which helps both providers and clients anticipate how to manage projects for the longer-term, knowing that competition for workers won’t spiral out of control.
For bigger countries like Mexico, Brazil and Colombia, there are a long list of secondary cities that are well positioned to become more visible on the global services map.
Doug Gattuso of Neoris says Cuiliacan, Mexico has been a star performer
Such is the case for Neoris, a global IT services and consultancy firm with a strong Nearshore presence, which employs several hundred staffers at a satellite center in Cuiliacan, Mexico. Speaking this week with Doug Gattuso, Neoris’ vice president and managing director for the US, he talked about the appeal of “rural” centers (Cuiliacan is tiny compared to Mexico City, with about 600,000 residents.) The city hosts two universities, including a technical college – Instituto Tecnologico De Culiacan – where Neoris pulls much of its talent.
For bigger countries like Mexico, Brazil and Colombia, there are a long list of secondary cities that are well positioned to become more visible on the global services map. Barranquilla, Colombia – for example – is a city with over 1 million residents and, is becoming better known for its professional services capabilities.
Honduran Students, Carrying an Evolved World-View, See Beyond Borders
January 19th, 2010By Kirk Laughlin, Editorial Director
I wonder what it would feel like if educated people I met in nearby countries in this Hemisphere had no recognition of New England, the place where I was born and grew up. How would I feel if they looked at me as if New England – its seafaring history, the Tea Party and Native American Tribes - was 
pretty much irrelevant.
The group from Del Campo School in Tegucigalpa, Honduras
In meeting with several groups of high school and college students in Honduras last week, during a tour of the country’s growing global services industry, one of the first things we talked about was how much these students understood about the United States, its influence in Latin America and the model of democracy and transparency it represents. But as they talked about their own personal encounters with Americans, they uniformly described instances where people had no idea where Honduras was – or simply, that it was another stone-age third-world country that didn’t matter.
It’s surprising in a way that these students show little to no anger about this wide-gap in awareness. They are accepting of the way things really are, showing a maturity that is well beyond what you might expect from typical 16 and 17-year-old youths, all of which have Facebook accounts through which they often learn about the larger world beyond their borders. As highly fluent English-speakers, developed in most cases through English exposure and practice since age 5, these students talked openly about their personal hopes and the transformative dreams they have for Honduras, which in recent months has been a target of worldwide condemnation because of the coup to replace a president (Mel Zelaya) who was, according to countless Hondurans, moving the country down a dangerous path away from democracy.
Investment Interest in Honduras: Nearshore Americas Visits San Pedro Sula (Espanol)
January 19th, 2010“Hay interés de invertir en SPS” Un experto norteamericano visitó el
(Source: LaPrensa.HN)
By Yesille Ponce: yesille.ponce@laprensa.hn
San Pedro Sula, Honduras
Compañías de telecomunicaciones mundialmente reconocidas como Verizon, Sprint y AT& T podrían instalar fácilmente sus centro de llamadas para brindar respuestas a sus clientes desde esta ciudad, segú Kirk Laughlin, experto norteamericano en el tema de tercerización de servicios.
Laughlin visitó el país hace unos días con el fin de proporcionar una amplia perspectiva de las oportunidades de tercerización para algunos inversionistas que tienen interés en San Pedro Sula y el resto de Honduras. Habló con NEGOCIOS sobre el futuro de esta industria.
Todo para atraer inversión
El experto confirmó las ventajas con que cuenta la capital industrial, en especial, en el tema de costo, talento humano y estabilidad política, que es clave para invertir. Agregó, que empresas activas en el Caribe dedicadas al cobro de tarjetas de crédito y bancos optarían por colocar …
Obama Takes Heat for Diplomatic Failures in Honduras
December 7th, 2009After months of delay, Arturo Valenzuela was finally confirmed as Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs last month. But for a job with such a long title, he may find it’s short on clout these days. Ostensibly, Valenzuela is President Obama’s new point man on Latin America; in reality, that job looks to be under the control of Republicans in Congress and conservatives inside Obama’s own diplomatic corps. In fact, when it comes to U.S. policy in Latin America — as events this week in Honduras suggest — it’s often hard to tell if George W. Bush isn’t still President.
Granted, Latin America is on Obama’s back burner as he tackles Afghanistan. But next year he plans to tackle immigration reform — an issue, like drug trafficking and free trade, that’s heavily related to how well the U.S. helps Latin America build more equitble democratic institutions (the …
Mobile Market Feels the Pain of Honduras Coup
November 2nd, 2009On June 28th of this year Interim President Roberto Micheletti ousted President Manuel Zelaya after the former rancher insisted on plans to hold a referendum to alter the national constitution. Days after the coup soldiers flew Zelaya at gunpoint into exile. Zelaya’s rivals accused the left-leaning politician of wanting to use the referendum to abolish a ban on presidential re-election. Since then Zelaya, backed by his supporters, attempted to return to the country but was forced to seek refuge in the Brazilian embassy to avoid arrest.
Senior U.S. and international diplomats flew to Honduras to broker an agreement and quell the chaos in the country. But talks recently collapsed and the impasse remains. As a result of Central America’s worst political crisis in decades, growth in Honduras’ mobile and fixed line telecoms segments — estimated to generate revenues of around US$1 billion — has begun to see a …
