Dollars and Sense, a News is my Business podcast · News is my Business

Puerto Rico's private sector wraps up active 2023; Bullish on 2024

·26 min·2 clips

a very interesting year for Puerto Rico's eco...

2023 is the anchor. Ramon Perez Blanco puts Puerto Rico's economy against a long contraction, one some economists have treated as depression-like since 2006. Nobody sounds ready to throw confetti. The conversation is more interested in where private businesses, consumers, and reconstruction work may be starting to shift conditions. Infrastructure matters. Perez Blanco points to reconstruction projects ramping up in 2023 as one concrete sign that the year felt different for the private sector. The Chamber stayed busy, too. Its work included education events and regular checks on business-owner sentiment and consumer sentiment in Puerto Rico. That gap is one of the sharper parts of the episode. Business owners, in his view, tend to see the island's economy with more optimism. Consumers are more guarded because the economy reaches them through their own pockets. The host keeps the claims from floating away. Instead of letting confidence sit there as a slogan, the interview asks what the Chamber actually did and how that work connects to business life on the island. Alliances are part of the answer. Perez Blanco says the Chamber signed a collaboration agreement with the Latin American Chamber of Commerce in Atlanta, Georgia, and is looking at other mainland organizations. The reason is demographic pressure. Puerto Rico's challenge, as he explains it, is tied to the diaspora and to understanding those movements with better detail. A study is underway. The Chamber is surveying Puerto Ricans who left the island in the last 10 years and Puerto Ricans who came back in the last five years, with results hoped for in early 2024. Politics sits nearby. The conversation treats 2024 as a major election year in Puerto Rico and on the U.S. mainland. Perez Blanco's ask is plain: the private sector should take more active leadership roles and make its views heard. The episode stays local and practical. It connects economic conditions to surveys, alliances, reconstruction, demographics, and business participation without pretending to deliver a grand forecast.

As heard by us

A practical year-end look at Puerto Rico's business climate, with attention to 2024's leadership demands.

The discussion closes 2023 with a steady view of Puerto Rico's private sector, treating the long contraction since 2006 as background rather than a headline.

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Why you'd press play

A year-end Puerto Rico business check on 2023's improving signals and the pressure of a pivotal election year.

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