Head of Puerto Rico’s economic dev’t travels to D.C. for meetings
Department of Economic Development and Commerce (DDEC, in Spanish) Secretary Manuel Cidre is heading to Washington D.C. this week to attend to “matters of high interest in favor of Puerto Rico’s economic development,” the agency announced.
“It’s a loaded agenda, with key people who can be our allies when it comes to advancing our economic plans,” he said.
“We understand the importance of the issues that are being discussed at a national and global level, and we will keep working to ensure that Puerto Rico is included in the conversation, while we continue with our initiatives to improve our competitiveness,” said Cidre, who will be accompanied in several activities by Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration Executive Director Carmen Feliciano and Puerto Rico Ports Authority Executive Director Joel Pizá.
The schedule includes meetings with Congressional leaders and key officials from several federal agencies to address “essential and strategic issues” focused on the island’s economic development, such as maximizing freight and passenger transshipment, and reshoring.
“We seek to position Puerto Rico as an ideal jurisdiction at the call of the administration of the President of the United States, Joe Biden, to bring the supply chain closer to the continental United States [reshoring], reiterating that, as a territory of the nation, Puerto Rican jobs represent American jobs, and using Puerto Rico in the reshoring strategy is not only good for Puerto Rico, but it is good for the nation,” said Cidre.
For the specific issue of reshoring, Cidre will meet with officials from the US Department of Commerce, when in addition to discussing reshoring, he will talk about how the Biden reform and the G7 agreements — a group of the seven most industrialized countries in the world — can affect Puerto Rico.
“We can’t lose perspective that two parallel processes are taking place, the Biden reform and the international agreements for a global minimum tax, and that can change the game and the strategy of how we position Puerto Rico in this scenario,” he added.
He will also meet with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and with US Department of Transportation officials to discuss the matter of the freight and passenger transshipment waiver and present the plans that the DDEC and the Ports Authority have been working on.
Cidre will return June 11.
