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Plan may help Mexico grow as an IT power
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20041028-9999-1b...
Nation ranks 50th worldwide in tech
By Diane Lindquist
October 28, 2004
TIJUANA ? Baja California might become one of Mexico's new information technology centers if a government program succeeds in luring foreign ventures
and creating domestic ones.
At a three-day binational conference called TI@mericas that began here yesterday, federal and state officials described plans to build up a national
tech sector that now is so small it barely registers among global competitors.
Information technology output accounts for only 3.2 percent of Mexico's gross domestic product. The country's industry ranks 50th worldwide.
But Sergio Carrera, the Mexican economic ministry official in charge of the tech program, noted that countries such as India, Ireland and Singapore
have successfully developed software industries that have driven those nations' economic growth.
"We are not dreaming," he said. "We are working to make it happen."
In the 1970s, few believed Mexico could become a manufacturing power, Carrera noted, but the country's maquiladoras helped propel it to become one of
the top 10 industrialized nations.
Under the federal program ProSoft, Mexico is targeting 10 areas of the country for technology development. Baja California, along with Jalisco and
Nuevo Leon, is one of the most important locales. The state is due to receive $1.7 million this year for training, marketing and business development
loans out a pool of $11 million allotted for the nation.
"Baja is one of the states that has the readiness to develop capabilities over a short period of time and to offer them to California and Arizona,"
Carrera said.
Gov. Eugenio Elorduy Walther said his administration is focusing on high tech as one of the business activity clusters to help it recover from the
economic downturn of the past three years that resulted from the severe contraction of Baja California's maquiladora manufacturing operations.
He promised to invest in education and infrastructure and said the state's proximity to high tech centers in California might help it attract such
investment.
Hopes in past years to develop a cross-border synergy in biotechnology, however, proved fruitless.
In July, a global developer of industrial parks announced plans to build a $400 million, 10,000-acre industrial park in Mexicali that would offer
companies a North American base for the manufacture of computer chips. No users have yet been announced.
Some of the state's electronics companies, such as Plantronics, develop their own manufacturing software. And Sony and International Rectifier, a
manufacturer of power semiconductors, have research and development operations in Tijuana.
Still, the city has almost no activities focused on information technology, said Carlos Uribe Valdez, promotion executive of the Tijuana Economic and
Industrial Development association.
"It's a new cluster we're trying to develop. We're trying to focus our promotions on it," he said. "We have some prospects, but it might take one or
two years to land them."
The TI@mericas conference continues today at the Grand Hotel in Tijuana and tomorrow at the Institute of the Americas on the campus of the University
of California San Diego.
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JESSE
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No way, our goverment is too stupid to make this work.
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