Archive for December 16th, 2009
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009
The FDA has announced the opening of its Mexico City post, the agency’s third office in Latin America and the tenth international post created in just over a year.
The new site will harmonize regulatory and guidance standards, and work on other collaborative initiatives between the U.S. and Mexican governments, such as information sharing, joint workshops on food and drug safety, and training on food-borne illnesses, the agency said in a release today.
FDA commissioner Margaret A. Hamburg, MD, noted that more than a third of the fresh fruits and vegetables consumed in the U.S. come from Mexico, along with a substantial number of medical devices.
The FDA will work with the foreign government agencies and private companies to develop certification programs, according to Murray M. Lumpkin, MD, the FDA’s Deputy Commissioner for International Programs.
The new office is another element in the FDA’s global initiative to regulate exports and imports between the U.S. and other countries and establish relations with foreign regulatory authorities, the agency said.
The FDA’s international posts are located in China, India, Europe, and Latin America, including offices in Santiago, Chile, and San José, Costa Rica.
The FDA opened its first Latin American office in Costa Rica this April. The first international office was opened in China in November 2008, with posts in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou.
The FDA maintains contact with foreign regulatory agencies in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East through offices in Rockville, Md.
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Wednesday, December 16th, 2009
In 10 days the country’s largest and most attended fair is set to open and workers of the Municipalidad de San José are working feverishly to put the finishing touches before the Ministerio de Salud (Health ministry) inspection.
Each year, the Zapote Fair organizers scurry to make last minute changes and adjustments in fear of not getting their operating permit by health officials, as it occurred a couple of years back.
Of course the blame for the last minute work does not rest entirely on the Municipalidad de San José, this year the Compañía Nacional de Fuerza y Luz (national light and power company), a division of the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE), has to complete a series of work on the fair grounds before the chinamos (food stands) and the bars concessionaires can begin their work and ready for the December 25 opening day.
However, before the fair can kick off at noon on Christmas Day, Health officials have to be satisfied that all safety and health regulations have been met.
The Zapote Fair is a tradition in San José and Costa Rica, as hundreds of thousands of fair goes visit each year.
The fair grounds are Zapote, on the east side of San José, across from the Registro Nacional. The fair runs until January 3.
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Wednesday, December 16th, 2009
Costa Rica has gone from being a bridge for drug trafficking between South and North America to becoming established as a warehouse and trading center for drug cartels, from which the authorities have seized 92.7 tons of cocaine and $17 million in the last 3 1/2 years.
“In this part of the world we are privileged by nature and the climate, but it is also the drug route from south to north, and of money from north to south,” Security Minister Janina Del Vecchio said in her annual activities report.
She said that Costa Rica is no longer just a transit area for drugs.
Now, according to Del Vecchio, “traffickers come here and store the drugs, and they don’t even have intermediaries – Colombians come and leave the drugs and Mexicans come and pick them up.”
Her view is shared by the director of the OIJ criminal investigation agency, Jorge Rojas, who several days ago decried the fact that his country is turning into a “meeting ground for Mexican and Colombian cartels.”
Rojas said that in recent months Colombian drug-running organizations have been detected bringing drugs to Costa Rica, where they store them and sell them to their Mexican “colleagues,” particularly those of the Sinaloa cartel.
Figures from the Security Ministry show that since May 2006 authorities have confiscated 92.7 tons of cocaine, mostly from boats in the Pacific Ocean, and have dismantled 36 international drug rings, made up above all by Colombians and Mexicans.
Dozens of vehicles, speedboats and properties have also been confiscated, as well as more than $17 million in cash.
“This is a very serious problem and does not mean we can’t contain it. We know, however, that we’re fighting against a giant with seven heads, against a structure with a bigger budget than any rich country in the world,” Minister Del Vecchio told Efe.
Noting that “80 percent of the drugs produced in South America” pass through Central America, she said regional coordination is crucial.
Police also need to be more specialized and have more technological resources available because the cartels are constantly reinventing their operations, she said.
Outstanding examples of drug-trade diversification discovered in Costa Rica this year have included hiding the banned substances in huge pieces of marble, inside of frozen sharks and in tanker trucks used for transporting chemicals.
“They have all the time and money in the world to traffic in any way they want: in wigs, surfboards, marble structures, sharks. They use anything that looks legal to do it,” Del Vecchio said.
The biggest seizure this year was a shipment of 2.2 tons of cocaine impounded last month at a warehouse in San Jose, while one of the most famous cases was the discovery of 395 kilos (870 pounds) of cocaine in a helicopter that crashed in May in the mountains in the eastern part of the country.
Costa Rican President Oscar Arias told reporters that “geography” has condemned his country.
“We are the waistline of the Americas, we are between the producers and consumers and we can’t do a thing,” he said.
He added that “drug prices are such a huge incentive that it is almost impossible” to eradicate the cartels, and urged the United States to increase its resources dedicated to regional cooperation and fighting drug consumption.
Costa Rica is a nation of 4.5 million inhabitants and some 11,000 police, with dozens of unguarded border crossings and with extensive coasts, all of which makes it a natural for drug trafficking.
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Wednesday, December 16th, 2009
Having been immersed in a political crisis following the June 28 coup, Honduras has been trying to seek a way out of it despite a widely unrecognized presidential election late last month.
However, the election, which was once pinned hopes on to solve the political stalemate, turned out to be controversial and further polarized the Honduran society since many countries refused to recognize it.
President-Elect Porfirio Lobo’s triumph is confronted with countless doubts and challenges to restore order in the country. At least for the time being, it seems that the effects of the coup will linger on in the coming months.
A few countries, with the United States in the lead, have decided to accept the electoral results. Lobo considered that this would enable Hondurans to once again attain the country’s pre-coup status quo. (more…)
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Wednesday, December 16th, 2009
US-based BPO and KPO firm Motif has opened a delivery center in Costa Rica where it will offer bilingual service in English and
Spanish. The company aims to tap Latino client base in the US and other geography. The company will invest $2.5 million in the center and will begin operations in January next year.
“The delivery center in Costa Rica will be the first of its kind to provide bilingual support to its clients in both English and Spanish. We studied several site locations in Latin America and settled on Costa Rica for its proximity to the US and a host of other reasons. The country may not be as cheap as other Latin American countries. But in long term the total operations cost it will be cheaper. Also, the country offers a very well educated and stable workforce,” said Chris Meneze, president and CEO of Motif.
The global expansion is part of company’s risk mitigation strategy for its customers. Apart from bilingual support, the new delivery center will provide location redundancy.
The new center will be with 500-seat capacity and will generate around 1,000 jobs and is part of the Motif’s network of delivery centers in India, Manila and Philippines. The company offers services like customer support, online fraud prevention, research & analytics, and back office processes. Health-care, finance & accounting and knowledge services like social media listening and research and analytics are new service lines added to the company.
The company is also looking to shift to an IT SEZ in Ahmedabad and create at least 1000 more jobs. The process is expected to get finalized in 2010.
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Wednesday, December 16th, 2009
Costa Rica, Ecuador and Panama said on Tuesday they were satisfied with the agreement reached between the Latin American banana producers and the European Union (EU), after more than 10 years’ negotiation over import taxes on that fruit.
Ecuador’s Deputy Trade Minister Julio Oleas said on Tuesday that Ecuador has reached an agreement on banana trade with the EU, which will benefit producers and traders because the import taxes were reduced.
The agreement was reached after a long and difficult negotiation of four months. It will come into effect after both sides finish their internal administrative and legal procedures.
According to the agreement, the EU duties on banana imports will be reduced from 176 euros (257 U.S. dollars) to 148 euros (216 dollars) per metric ton, and eventually to 114 euros (166 dollars) in eight years.
The agreement solves a decade-long dispute due to the non-fulfillment of the World Trade Organization commitment regarding the Latin American banana producers, said Oleas.
According to Oleas, the agreement will allow Ecuador to recover its competitiveness margin in banana export, compared with the producers in the African, Caribbean and Pacific regions. The bananas from those regions are shipped to the EU tariff-free.
Oleas said that Ecuador also discussed the export of tropical fruits to Australia, Canada, the United States, Iceland, Switzerland, Japan, Norway and New Zealand.
Meanwhile, Costa Rican Foreign Trade Minister Marco Vinicio Ruiz said that he was “pleased to confirm that we have reached on Tuesday a satisfactory understanding with the EU on the bananas.”
Panama’s Commerce and Industry Minister Roberto Henriquez expressed his satisfaction over the agreement and said that “what is happening makes us very optimistic regarding the end of these difficult negotiations, where we can say with pride that the Panamanian negotiation team has played a fundamental role.”
Latin American bananas now account for about 60 percent of the EU market. In 2008, Ecuador exported 1.4 million tons of bananas, worth about 800 million dollars, to the EU.
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