With just a week to go before the Oct. 26 deadline to submit disaster loan applications, the U.S. Small Business Administration announced Wednesday that so far it has approved $2 million in assistance for damages sustained by local businesses and residents in the wake of Hurricane Irene earlier this year.
Metropistas, the consortium of companies that is now running PR-22 and PR-5, will use the public-private partnership agreement established with the government as the model to possibly secure similar deals in the U.S. mainland, company officials said Monday.
Representatives from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis will visit Puerto Rico later this month as part of ongoing efforts to steer the island toward improving methods of collecting and producing high-quality statistics about local economic activity.
A week after accepting applications from 1,650 homeowners looking to save their dwellings from foreclosure, Gov. Luis Fortuño announced Tuesday there will be a third round of government assistance to benefit another 1,500 families.
Representatives from more than a dozen labor unions and the private sector met with Resident Commissioner Pedro Pierluisi Thursday to outline strategies to defend the Puerto Rico Investment Promotion Act and the American Jobs Act, both of which they claim could spur economic development for the island.
The global currents and economic challenges of the private sector, which have generated a sort of pessimism that focuses on only one part of the current reality, have significantly affected Puerto Rico’s manufacturing sector, Economic Development and Commerce Secretary José Pérez-Riera said.
In what may constitute as one of the most significant unions between the public and private sector in recent years, dozens of private sector and government officials gathered Tuesday to sign a memorandum of understanding to support the Luis Fortuño administration’s efforts to push the Puerto Rico Investment Promotion Act in Washington.
Autopistas Metropolitanas de Puerto Rico, the consortium the government selected in June to assume the management, maintenance and operation of PR-22 and PR-5, will take the driver’s seat today, vowing to turn the heavily transited toll highways into world-class roads.
Gov. Luis Fortuño signed Thursday an executive order creating a committee to implement public policy for housing that calls for working with federal housing officials to make better use of funds.
The government plans to raise at least $785 million through three separate bond issues in coming months, high-ranking administration officials told the stateside investment community Thursday.
In the first nine months since the government launched its IVU Loto system, only 20 sweepstakes winners have claimed their prizes, taking home about 3 percent of the $630,000 up for grabs, Treasury Department numbers show.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has awarded $585,000 in federal funding to recruit security and specialized staff to operate the Jobos Bay Estuarine Research Reserve, Puerto Rico’s Resident Commissioner in Washington, D.C, Pedro Pierluisi, said Wednesday.
Three more toll plazas will become completely cashless effective Aug. 20, when the Department of Transportation and Public Works will finish converting the Humacao North and South, as well as Ceiba locations on PR-53, agency Secretary Rubén Hernández Gregorat said Thursday.
The Public Buildings Authority sold more than $1 billion in bonds in the Puerto Rico and U.S. markets within the last week, which it will use to build and upgrade some 100 public schools and repay a credit line it has with the Government Development Bank, GDB President Juan Carlos Batlle said Wednesday.
Contrasting Puerto Rico’s current economic conditions with those of the U.S. mainland’s, Gov. Luis Fortuño said the “U.S. is starting to suffer the consequences of not acting immediately” to its escalating fiscal troubles.
A Dow Jones/Factiva content provider since 2014
Subscribe to our Dollars & Sense podcast!
NIMB ON SOCIAL MEDIA