Tourism continues growing as a major foreign exchange earner for the country. Last year, 773,000 tourists arrived, bringing in more than $230 million. Percentage projections for further growth this year are modest. It is expected that more than 800,000 visitors will come to Nicaragua’s shores, resulting in earnings of over $260 million.

The Nicaraguan Chamber of Small and Medium Tourism Industry (CANTUR) recently presented a plan for development in the North Atlantic Autonomous Region (RAAN). It includes proposals for beachgoers, eco and adventure tourists, and ethnic-rural-community tourism, taking advantage of that region’s wide variety of offerings that include jungle rivers, mountainous rainforest, pristine coastlines, pine forests, Caribbean islets, and first peoples’ villages.

The Chamber estimates that investments totaling $335 million would be needed. So far, however, they know not from where such funding would come. Initially, it is suggested that international development agencies that have committed themselves to aiding small and medium business as part of their global plans to reduce poverty might be forthcoming. This, proponents say, could be done with a kind of trust fund that would eliminate the middle-manning of traditional financing bodies, like banks, that charge exorbitant interest rates on loans for development.

Meanwhile, the north-central region is the target of just over $5 million in seed funding from the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg to grow the project for a Coffee Tourism Route in five departments of the country. There are some extremely beautiful areas apt for tourism in this zone, which sadly has so far not seen any of the benefits of the boom occurring since the turn of the century.

It’s mixed message time. The Ministry of Treasury and Public Finance states that investment promotion is a “priority” of the current administration. Yet government funding for its investment promotion agency ProNicaragua was slashed to zero, leaving it to slog along with only donor funding courtesy of the United Nations Development Program.

When it comes to developing a project, it’s not ever easy, but ignoring your neighbor doesn’t make it any more so. The word “neighbor” should encompass not just the local residents nearby, but the country as whole and its institutions. So long as some basic steps and permits required in Nicaraguan legislation are not ignored, sidestepped, or glossed over, Nicaragua is a cakewalk when it comes to building your dream. Compare it to other countries where even the height of your fence or the color you paint it is subject to a discussion by the town council commission of esthetics. This simple principle still escapes some people who have come to develop here.

A builder had a stop work order issued against the construction of a beachfront house, not because the structure is in any way offensive, but because apparently he did not take the necessary steps for building permits, including an environmental impact study, necessary for any development within 80 meters of a coastline, riverbank, or lakeshore. Other developers had begun land-shaping the hills overlooking a stretch of coastline, carving out roads and platforms for housing lots. Once again, some necessary requirements were not being met and they also received a stop work order. Had they treated the authorities with some neighborly respect, they could have avoided some unnecessary hassles.

On the other side of the coin, you have a developer of the Arenas Tolas project at Playa Gigante. Local residents, perhaps a titch resentful of some outsider coming in to develop and make some considerable earnings, had had some run-ins with the investor Armel González in recent years. Realizing that good neighbors are a valuable resource, the project, at its own expense, invested in providing safe drinking water for 43 families making up the local community, thereby appeasing them and local authorities, as well as making a good photo op for his project.

Call the moving vans. The new US embassy facility, a huge construction on the South Highway in the capital with ultra-thick walls and super-strong columns, will be ready this coming August, says Ambassador Paul Trivelli. The original offices near the Tiscapa Lagoon in central

Baseball is passion in Nicaragua, and there’s nothing quite like having a local boy make good as a Major League Baseball pitcher (except perhaps a world champion boxer in one weight class or another). Nicaragua now has two such throwers: Vicente Padilla for the Texas Rangers and Devern Hansack for the Boston Red Sox.

Padilla’s record has not been illustrious of late. And Hansack, the “Monster from Pearl Lagoon,” was sent down to Triple A by the Boston Red Sox during the spring exhibition games, apparently not being up to snuff. But after his pitching display there, he was called right back up in early May. Wouldn’t it be nice to see a Pearllagooner in the pennant race?

When calling some company to get something done, you usually get a mechanical voice recording right off the bat. Then you touch-tone one number after another till the computer generated robot voice tells you to hold until a customer service representative takes the line. Often enough, you may hear the lilt of a Calcutta accent, but don’t be surprised if in the near future, someone with a Nicaraguan accent takes your call.

Nicaragua is positioning itself to enter into the world market of call centers because of its natural resource of bilingual people and the lower wages they will receive compared to other countries in the region that have already broken into this market, like Costa Rica and Panama. On the plus side for investors in such enterprises is that they may be able to take advantage of the tax exemptions available under the free trade zone legislation.

During the Enrique Bolaños Administration, many miles of good highway were finished, but it was like pulling teeth in some cases to get the international contractors to do their job. Two fiascos with international firms contracted to build highways made headlines repeatedly. One had to do with a Spanish company hired to widen the highway from Managua to Granada, a project plagued with delays, and the oher was a Mexican firm that left some unfinished business on the final stretch to the Honduran border going north out of Chinandega. Having borne witness to all this, the government of Daniel Ortega has announced that it will form a national construction firm.

Rather than being purely Nicaraguan State-owned, the new company would be made up by this country, Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, and any other countries that join in with the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas, or ALBA as it is known. Details of exactly how this would work have yet to be forthcoming.

Criticisms of the announcement, however, were quick to come, some merely because it was Sandinista leader Ortega who announced it. A dyed-in-the-wool anti-Sandi Liberal, Eliseo Núñez (formerly pro-Arnoldo Alemán, now with the Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance or ALN, likely to jump ships when political winds shift) had a particularly visceral reaction. He said you only have to look at the poor record of State construction firms during the 1980s under the FSLN government, which he argues, received an inventory of 5000 miles of constructed roadways in 1979, yet by 1990, there were less than 1000 miles of good road left. With this “proven record” of failure, a Nicaraguan State firm under the Sandinistas would not be up to the task, he alleges.

Eliseo conveniently failed to mention that a civil war wracked the country over that time period. Contra forces routinely attacked construction equipment camps and the aftermath of the landmines they planted along country roads to disrupt any and all interurban traffic made the potholes of today look like no more than a dimple on a baby’s bum.

A more thoughtful consideration was raised by this politician. It has to do with the fact that the majority of roads built in the country since Sandinista rule ended have been financed with external funding, grants or soft-term loans, in order to build up the country’s war-ravaged infrastructure in hopes of promoting some economic development. Donors put conditions on money they pour into the country, conditions like open bidding processes that allow for involvement of firms from the country where the money comes from in the first place. All of which means a quasi-multinational State firm, as proposed by Ortega, would have to show that it can compete competitively in this open market.

For his part, President Ortega stated, “We have to free ourselves from that dependence on outside resources. When it comes to some inconvenience, they take you to international arbitration, which means millions spent on lawyers and lost fights.” He was referring to lawsuits filed by the past administration against contractors to have them comply with what they signed on for.

At the same press conference, the Minister of Transport and Infrastructure took the opportunity to announce that there will be repairs to “approximately” 731 kilometers of already existing roadways and the construction of another 100 or so new kilometers. Many new highways proposed over the years, including the long-awaited Coastal Highway, are still on the drawing board.

The National Police and the Nicaraguan Army have struck several severe blows against cocaine traffickers in recent months with thousands of kilos of coke being rounded up, along with the individuals caught white handed in the busts involving small boats and planes.

Nicaragua is obviously stepping up its contribution to the so-called “war on drugs,” even with its limited resources. Curiously enough, other neighboring countries receiving more financial and material support from US authorities have not been as zealous or successful in making a dent in international drug running.

Earlier this year, a local daily published a story based on declarations by a high-ranking police officer who said that some judges here received payoffs from Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel to have arrested drug traffickers set free. A quick glance at results from several cases over recent years shows that with unusual frequency, major drug busts resulted in no convictions, much to the frustration of the police force that had gone to all the trouble of setting the traps. The Association of Judges and Magistrates of Nicaragua (AJUMANIC), feeling that the reputation of their profession was being besmirched, right away threatened the police and the newspaper with a lawsuit for slander.

National Police Chief Aminta Granera quickly clarified that the information from the police source referred only to “particular, very specific cases.” The outcome of the trials in the months to come will shed more light on this situation.