Investing in El Salvador

Last year I wrote about the announcement of Cutuco Energy's plans to build a large natural gas electric power plant in El Salvador and the jobs that plant would bring to El Salvador. Those plans are still moving forward. A recent article describes the man behind the project and his thoughts about making such a major investment in El Salvador:
When Bill Perkins, 39, took his first trip to El Salvador, he was not expecting much. "This is a country that, not long ago, was being ravaged by civil war," he says. "I was bracing for a lot of rubble and bullet holes."

What he found, however, were well-paved roads, hotels packed with foreign investors and a populace with "a lot of fancy degrees".

That reconnaissance mission three years ago has led to one of the biggest private investments in dollar terms in Central America since the Panama Canal: an $800m, 525-megawatt, gas-fired power plant that aims to bring El Salvador and its near neighbours cheaper, cleaner-burning electricity at a time when the region's dependence on more expensive oil-based fuels is inciting strikes and wreaking financial havoc....(more)

Comments

Anonymous said…
even though we can bitch a lot about the pollution and what-nots this project would bring, i hope everybody realizes the undeniable truth that what el salvador needs, economically, is a huge pouring of investment capital, so multi-millionaire projects like this one are a solid start. keep the money coming to el salvador, the country needs to produce and grow richer. eventually some of that money can down stream into the lower classes as salaries for jobs. more jobs, better education and a better judicial system, vote mauricio funes 2009!!!
El-Visitador said…
«vote mauricio funes 2009»

He he. You just contradicted the noble thoughts you expressed immediately before.

An FMLN administration is a surefire guarantee that foreign and local investors will keep the money where it is safely away from Socialists: abroad.


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The AES project has been DELAYED because MARN has been sitting on the permits. Here is an AES President, Pujol, as recently as May 7th: "Pujol warned that the project is behind because the permits are taking longer than expected".

So now that El Salvador has again eperienced rolling blackouts due to lack of sufficient generating capacity reserve, all Salvadoreans need to thank the idiots at MARN and the idiot president who created MARN: Calderón Sol.

Thanks, Calderón Sol, for the blackouts.
Anonymous said…
thank you for the note :)