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.

A recent report from the government agency in charge of such matters outlined some of the possible effects of climate change or global warming on Nicaragua. For a start, rainfall in Pacific areas has fallen by 6% to 10% over the last 100 years, overall temperatures have climbed the mercury slightly, and sea levels may have risen an inch or two. In reality, no one really knows for sure since records of what was and what is are sketchy at best.

Yet even so, it is possible to predict that the best export gourmet coffee will have to be grown at higher altitudes and droughts will be more erratic and unpredictable than before. Prognoses for the upcoming hurricane season do not yet have any odds being placed on them by Jimmy the Greek. In all likelihood, the whims of the winds will prevail. We suggest buying an umbrella and fixing a hole in the roof where the rain comes in.

After the first months in office of re-elected President Daniel Ortega’s government, there has been positive evolution of investment, construction, export earnings, and other major economic indicators: “satisfactory” to use the in-vogue word of the International Monetary Fund. This has all happened in here in Nicaragua, a country with limitless potential, despite much nay-saying by many who view the return of the Sandinista Party to power as a throwback to ill-fated times past gone or new dark ages more unimaginable than any harbinger of doom that a Cassandra could predict.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, the new administration began working on keeping some campaign promises.

Orders came down from the Executive Branch to eliminate all charges for basic healthcare services at State-run facilities. Past administrations had chipped away at the concept of free healthcare by levying different fees, even charging for some rudimentary medicines. This will naturally result in increased use of the facilities by some of the poorest people who, before this measure, did not seek healthcare because they knew they could not afford it. Just how much more demand there will be has yet to be seen.

Likewise, charges at public schools had the kibosh put to them with the end to the scheme for “school autonomy.” That set up allowed the administration of a public school to charge parents a fee for each child attending. The money raised that way would be used to improve the school facilities and the schooling offered there. One result was that parents were keeping some of their children out of school because it was beyond the reach of their meager economic means.

Both measures mean that the government will have to look for resources in order to fill the financial breach created by not having such additional income coming into each individual facility.