Puerto Rico Agriculture Secretary Myrna Comas told lawmakers during budget hearings Monday that upon arriving to the agency in January, she uncovered an entity “in a precarious situation, with the lowest budget in its history, only 337 employees, no updated agricultural statistics, and no field level progress reports to evaluate and track work."
Puerto Rico Statistics Institute Executive Director Mario Marazzi asked the Legislature to assign the agency a budget of a little more than $1.2 million for fiscal 2014, when it has set out to undertake 25 projects to expand and improve information databases.
Puerto Rico’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in January was 14.6 percent, representing a drop of 0.7 percentage points when compared to the same month last year, when it stood at 15.3 percent, Labor Secretary-designate Vance Thomas said Monday.