Puerto Rico board looks to attract high-priority businesses

Puerto Rico will focus on growing high-potential economic sectors, enhancing skills and participation, and taking steps to increase productivity, according to an Oversight Board long-term economic plan, Board Revitalization Coordinator José Ramon Pérez-Riera presented at a meeting Wednesday.

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

The board hopes to nurture the next generation of skilled talent, increase labor force participation, and improve talent migration and retention.

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

The island benefits from certain asset production and consumption sectors and strengths in some service sectors, but lags in key sector performance and export services.

Also in its favor are its pockets of high-priority talent and strong connectivity infrastructure. However, it is hindered by a shrinking population and labor force and an unreliable infrastructure.

Pérez-Riera said for the last 20 years the United State economy has grown as Puerto Rico's economy has generally declined though the island's economy has stabilized in the last few years.

The economic integrated plan is meant to complement the island's fiscal plan, Pérez-Riera said. The plan is in an early stage, Puerto Rico Board Spokesman Matthias Rieker said.

Pérez-Riera said his group wants to avoid the problems that hindered past plans and consulted with more than 125 stakeholders and will speak with outsiders.

In another development, Board Executive Director Robert Mujica said the board would take a more active role in getting rid of permitting roadblocks for renovations and improvements to the islands' electrical infrastructure. The island continues to experience too many outages, he said. The repair of the energy system since Hurricane Maria in 2017 has been too slow, he said.

In response, Gov. Pedro Pierluisi said the federal government has had a strong share of the blame for delays of reconstruction. Further, reconstruction hasn't moved particularly slowly compared to what happened in New York and New Jersey after Superstorm Sandy and in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina, he said.

The local government and federal government have worked in innovative fashion recently to advance the repair of the energy system, he said.