BUSINESS & ECONOMICS |
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS |
Monday, August 28, 2000 Online Edition 35 |
Micro-enterprise generates 359,626 jobs According to a
study released by the International Labor Organization (ILO) last week in
Costa Rica, 2.4 million small businesspeople live below the poverty line or
at a subsistence level in Central America. Guatemala has
the highest number of micro-enterprises with 721,000 small businesses and
859,000 self-employed persons. El
Salvador placed second with 58,031 small businesses and 302,411
self-employed; and Honduras came in third with 21,465 small businesses and
305,682 self-employed persons. Jorge
Arroyo, director of ILO's Central American Small Enterprise Support Program,
said these numbers will continue to climb for as long as unemployment is
high. -- El Tiempo 15 music stores closed this year According
to information released by the Tax Department, 15 of the 30 companies that
distributed music (CD's, cassettes, etc.) at the beginning of the year have
closed. One
music store owner stated that the reason most of the stores closed was due
to poor sales resulting from unfair competition in the black market and the
sale of pirated music. He said
that, for example, his margin of profit for the sale off a CD is only Lps.
50.00, while black market profiteers earn Lps. 100.00. According
to the Tax Department, income from music sales has dropped from
approximately Lps. 1.5 million to Lps. 1 million a month during the course
of this year. - El Heraldo Coffee retention program goes into effect In
a meeting held in Costa Rica last week, members of the Association of Coffee
Producing Countries agreed to withhold 15 million sacks of coffee this year.
The objective of the coffee retention plan, announced in May, is to
increase coffee prices on international markets. Brazil and Colombia have already begun stockpiling coffee and the rest of the Latin American countries are scheduled to begin by Oct. 1. ¾ El Heraldo |
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Monday, August 21, 2000 Online Edition 34 |
IHMA
to purchase grain harvests As a means of establishing a reserve of basic grains, the Honduran
Institute of Agricultural Marketing (IHMA) will buy the harvests of small
producers who received loans from the National Agricultural Development Bank
(BANADESA). The agreement between the institutions, which is valid between Sept. 1,
2000 and March 31, 2001, will allow farmers to sell their bean and corn
crops to IHMA for the total amount of credit received, as well as an
additional 40 percent. ¾ La Prensa SPS
water company up for bid Bids for the San Pedro Sula water company DIMA were received last week as
part of the final phase in privatizing this agency. The company that wins the bid will receive a 30-year contract for
providing potable water and sanitation services to the nation's industrial
capital. It is estimated that a
US$150 million to US$200 million investment will be needed to improve and
install water and sewage treatment plants, as well as to obtain new sources
of water for the company to run in a more efficient manner. ¾
La Prensa WFP
approves funds for drought victims An
emergency fund of US$200,000 was approved last week by the World Food
Program to assist farmers in southern Honduras affected by this year's
drought. The aid, which will be in the form of food
products such as basic grains, cereals and food oils, will be distributed to
approximately 11,000 families in 110 communities. -
El Heraldo Exporters could receive help from Mexico The
President of the Mexican Chamber of Commerce, Raul Chajtur, announced last
week that the Bank of Mexico is interested in opening long-term,
low-interest lines of credit through local commercial banks to Honduran
exporters of products to Mexico. Chajtur said Mexico is interested in building up
trade relations between the two countries because they can complement each
other in many factors. He said
that Honduras has a promising future in tourism, as well as in providing raw
materials for cloth and agriculture, while on the other hand Mexico has
money and technology. - La Tribuna |
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Monday, August 14 2000 Online Edition 33 |
Inflation 0.7% for July According to the Central Bank of Honduras (BCH), inflation rose 0.7
percent for the month of July this year compared to 0.8 percent last year. The increase is attributed to higher prices of corn, fruit, potatoes
and fish, a 0.1 percent rise in the cost of transportation (gasoline and
airplane tickets) and a 0.1 percent rise in the health sector spurred by
higher dental costs. A higher rate was prevented by the lower cost of milk products and
some vegetables. - El Heraldo Class barriers broken in public hospitals According to the Carlos Hueso, director of the Hospital Escuela, the
economic recession and higher health costs has caused a significant increase
in the number of patients treated at Tegucigalpa's largest public hospital,
many of whom are from the middle and upper classes. Hueso stated that emergency care has risen 33 percent over last year
while out-patient visits have increased 22 percent.
He said socio-economic surveys are taken of all patients and the
hospital has discovered that many middle to higher income patients are using
their facilities to take advantage of high-tech equipment, as well as the
services of specialized doctors. He also said this situation is alarming due to the fact that the
hospital is already running on a 41 percent budget deficit with only 10
percent of the necessary human resources. Hueso blamed politics for most of the problem, stating that
government health officials show little interest in resolving the situation
during their four year terms of office and are generally more interested in
politics than in the health sector. -
El Heraldo Liability insurance bill submitted to Congress The Honduran Chamber of Insurance Companies recently submitted to
Congress a proposal for a bill that would require all motor vehicle owners
in Honduras to buy liability insurance policies costing between US$50 and
US$150. - El Heraldo Celtel lowers consumer's costs Celtel, the only cellular telephone company in Honduras, has
implemented a number of measures to lower the costs of using a cellular
phone. Among these are charges
by the second instead of by the minute; the issuance of 90-minute Celtel
cards that will allow their holders to receive calls for 90 days instead of
the current 30 days; and finally cell phone owners will no longer be charged
for calls received that they don't answer. Celtel marketing representative, Thelma Sarmiento, estimates Celtel
users will be able to save up to 50 percent of their former bills. -
El Heraldo |
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Monday, August 7, 2000 Online Edition 32 |
More reconstruction funds The European
Commission and the Honduran government signed a grant agreement last week in
the amount of 30 million Eurodollars as part of the Central American
Reconstruction Program. The funding is
earmarked for education, health, water and sanitation programs. -- La Tribuna Abandoned vehicles to be auctioned The Direccion Ejecutivo de Ingresos -- the Honduran revenue department
-- will place on the auction block this month 450 abandoned vehicles at the
facilities of the Port Authority in Puerto Cortes. According to
the port administrator, most of the vehicles are old cars sent by Honduran
nationals in the United States to relatives here who were unable to pay
import taxes and never claimed them. Apparently, an
auction hasn't been held since 1997 and not only the vehicles (cars, buses,
ambulances, dump trucks, pick-ups) will be sold off but also the objects
inside them. ¾ La Tribuna Salary hikes requested may break microenterprises Representatives
of the Honduran Council of Private Enterprise (COHEP) stated last week that
the Lps. 1,000 across-the-board wage hike that workers unions are demanding
will negatively affect small and micro-enterprises the most. Although COHEP
will not officially respond to the worker's demand until next Tuesday, Vice
President Oswaldo Kafati predicts that if implemented this measure could
cause massive unemployment and the closing of most micro and small
businesses, 138 of which have already closed as a result of Hurricane Mitch. Kafati stated
that these businesses will not able to absorb higher labor costs without the
benefit of higher productivity and that the end result will be higher
inflation. -- La Tribuna FHIS receives Lps. 51M for projects The minister of
the Honduran Social Investment Fund (FHIS), Moises Starkman, met the 27
mayors from the department of Francisco Morazan on Tuesday to discuss
possible projects to be developed in their municipalities with the Lps. 51
million allocated for this purpose. Starkman said
FHIS will try to implement a minimum of three projects per municipality with
the funding. He also said the
communities can either continue with projects they already approved during
the previous administration or choose new projects they consider to be more
important. Municipalities
that decide on new projects will have to work with the Foundation for the
Development of Rural Entrepreneurship (FUNDER), a
company hired by FHIS to provide technical assistance on prioritizing
projects. -- La Tribuna Taiwan donates funds for computers The
government of Taiwan on Tuesday donated US$600,00 to the "Ampliando
Horizontes" program implemented by the Honduran government to provide
computers to 114 Honduran schools. President
Carlos Flores said at the official ceremony that this funding will be used
to buy computers for 67 schools and that the Honduran government, as the
project counterpart, will remodel school computer centers and install
necessary terminals. -- La Prensa |
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