Puerto Rico’s government wants to attract high-priority companies

Puerto Rico will focus on developing high-potential economic sectors, raising skills and participation, and taking steps to increase productivity, according to the Supervisory Board’s long-term economic plan, which Supervisory Board Revitalization Coordinator José Ramon Pérez-Riera presented at a meeting on Wednesday.

The board expects to take steps to attract businesses and expand them into priority sectors, Pérez-Riera said. It hopes to ease requirements for doing business and increase federal support for the island’s economic growth.

Management hopes to nurture a new generation of skilled talent, increase labor market participation, and improve the migration and retention of talented workers.

Pérez-Riera said the island has both strengths and weaknesses.

The island benefits from some asset-rich production and consumption sectors and has strengths in some services sectors, but lags in performance in key sectors and export services.

It also benefits from pockets of high-priority talent and a strong connectivity infrastructure. But it is hampered by a shrinking population and workforce, and unreliable infrastructure.

Pérez-Riera said that for the past 20 years, the U.S. economy has been growing, while Puerto Rico’s economy has generally been declining. The island’s economy has stabilized over the past few years.

The integrated economic plan is intended to complement the island’s fiscal plan, Pérez-Riera said. The plan is in its early stages, said Puerto Rico board spokesman Matthias Rieker.

Pérez-Riera said his group wants to avoid the problems that have hampered previous plans, and that it has consulted with more than 125 stakeholders and will also talk to outsiders.

In another development, board executive director Robert Mujica said the board will take a more active role in removing obstacles to permits for repairs and improvements to the islands’ electrical infrastructure. The island continues to experience too many power outages, he said. repair of the energy system after Hurricane Maria in 2017 was too slow, he said.

In response, Gov. Pedro Pierluisi said the federal government bears much of the blame for the delays in rebuilding. Moreover, the rebuilding has not been particularly slow compared with what happened in New York and New Jersey after Superstorm Sandy and in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina, he said.

He added that local and federal authorities have recently taken innovative steps to speed up the repair of the energy system.