Los Congos was just recently featured in two recent articles. One article in el Nuevo Diario featuring Los Congos and outlining the community and a second in La Prensa describing foreign investment and its benefit to Nicaragua. Please find a translated version below. We have used Google's translation tool to preserve the original intention and to insure that they are posted bias free. While Google translation is true to the original, the translation is often poor.

Translated using Google Translation

La Prensa, May 16, 2007

To the ?fishing? of foreign capital

http://www-ni.laprensa.com.ni/archivo/2007/
mayo/16/suplementos/negocios/191214.shtml

Arlen Cerday Mario Jose Moncada | economia@laprensa.com.ni

Jeffrey Fich is a American who arrived at Nicaragua to remain. One fell in love with this country, that he looks for to maintain a growth maintained of his economy, pushed partly by Inversión Extranjera Directa (IED). The attraction of Fich is so much that for a year has been living in the country and has decided to invest 25 million dollars.

At least 300 earth apples located in the lagoon of Support, in the municipality of Diriá, Granada, were chosen by this American to invest the capital that promises to create a tourist complex denominated the Congos, in reference to the fauna of those mammals who live in the region, with their company Laguna S.A. of which he is president.

At the moment the industralist completes some of the legal requirements that have slopes and that are demanded by Nicaragua. Among them, the Natural approval of the study of environmental impact on the part of the Ministry of the Atmosphere and Resources (Marena), permission on which depends that it begins to raise the tourist construction, that it would initiate with a hotel of 72 rooms.

Fich, that resides in Granada with its wife, knows the potential of the lagoon of Support to become one of ?mecas? of the nica tourism, and for that reason it has not doubted in impelling this project of tourist investment that glides to generate more than 350 direct uses.

The industralist knows that the Enterprise Social Responsibility (HEAD OF CATTLE) pays, reason why is arranged to destine 200 apples at least to create a reserve and to reforest it with native species.

The vice-president of Laguna S.A., Ausberto Narváez, assures that with the tourist project they try to directly involve to the Mayorship of the municipality and his settlers. It maintains that the goal is to count, in his labor plant, at least the 50 percent of original workers of this granadino municipality, located exactly to 45 kilometers to the east of Managua.

What attracted Fich to invest in Nicaragua? Which is the rate and tendency of the foreign investment in the country? What offers the country to the investors? And, coverall, what challenges face the country and the Government to guarantee that the investment continues arriving? Here some answers.

INVESTMENT NEEDS ?CLEAR RULES?

This week, Robert Mosbacher, president and chief of a main directorate of the Corporation for the Investments Deprived in the Outside (OPIC, by its abbreviations in English), it visited Nicaragua to sign the delivery of a bottom of 10 million dollars to the Central American Credit union (Bancentro), with which it will finance the construction of an urbanization of 1.300 houses for middle-class.

For Mosbacher the tourist sector is one of which it has greater potential to attract investments.

And in this mission to haul capitals, Nicaragua, like the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean, have challenges and opportunities. The competition is intense and ferocious.

?As long as the rules of the game are the same ones, beginning by the respect to the deprived property, I do not believe that overnight it goes to have a change to desire to invest here?, it responds on how it sees the panorama to invest now in Nicaragua that the country is governed by the leftist Daniel Ortega.

Pero Mosbacher notices that still there are obstacles so that the country manages to attract greater investments, like the necessity to have a greater stability of the judicial system. ?As long as the laws are firm and clear, I believe that always there will be the opportunity from which more investments come?, it insists.

THE PULSE OF THE INVESTMENT

At the beginning of the month, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (Cepal) it presented/displayed the annual report of 2006 on the foreign investment in Latin America and Caribbean.

According to the Cepal, Nicaragua it received 290 million dollars in the 2006; 49 million dollars more than in the 2005.

The Cepal celebrates that the growth obeys to the reflection of a good macroeconomic performance, among other factors.

But the executive secretary of the Cepal, Jose Luis Machinea, concludes that ?the IED in Latin America and the Caribbean remain stable, but loses participation in the world?, according to a report sent to the PRESS.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Machinea notices that the active and integrated policies produce better results. These policies, say, combine three elements: objectives of the development strategy, advantages of the country guest and necessities of the investor with subjection to the budgetary restrictions and of policies of the receiving country.

?An active policy of promotion would have to contemplate the coordination between the private sector and the public apparatus and a institucionalidad (organisms of promotion of investments) that has sufficient financial and human resources to articulate the process?, indicates Machinea.

By the same, it recommends that ?besides to improve his attractiveness (human rules of game, infrastructure, resources, competitiveness, among others), Latin America and the Caribbean would have to give more importance to the organisms of promotion of investments, tying them with the development strategy?.

HOW IS NICARAGUA?

Nicaragua, by all means, is not free of these challenges to attract the direct foreign investment.

The task is outlined greater because, from last January, the country releases a government presided over by the sandinista Daniel Ortega, of 61 years, an ex- guerrilla of left that 28 years back headed a armed revolution to end the dictatorship of 44 years of the dynasty of the Somozas. Ortega governed during 10 years, in which the national economy was devastated.

Second day of his Government, 11 of January happened, Ortega adhered to country, without to consult to society neither to parliament, to Alternative Bolivariana for Américas (White), which he impels Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez You cold, who promotes in his country a nationalization of the economy, to which also seems to point Ortega.

Recently, the economist and expert in foreign trade, Alexander Arauz, valued that ?countries with economic policies like the Dawn (Alternative Bolivariana for the Américas), run the risk of driving away the attraction of investments and of causing nervousness?.

Tuesday at night, during the inauguration of the house model of a new urbanization that is constructed in Sandino City, the President of the Republic, Daniel Ortega Saavedra, admitted that the country needs the investment.

Ortega indicated that ?the Nicaraguans we did not need that investment that arrives and it is possible to be gone at any time, if not of an investment in the long term?.

According to Juan Carlos Pereira, executive director of the Agency of Promotion of Investments of Nicaragua (ProNicaragua), the country must focus in the attraction of new capitals for industries with value added for the development of the national economy.

COUNTRY OF OPPORTUNITIES

The economist Eduardo Montiel assures that ?definitively, Nicaragua is a country with opportunities? to attract the Foreign Investment Directa and Ortega receives a stable country in macroeconomic matter.

For Cirilo sociologist Knoll some of the opportunities of the country are that it offers a cheap force of work, does not have industrial infrastructure and the interested capital can be based with relative facilities, offered in its majority by the Free Trade Agreement of Central America and Dominican Republic with the United States (Dr-Cafta).

Roberto Zamora Llanes, president of Financial Group LAFISE, assures that at the moment ?Nicaragua has the best conditions than some Governor has wished fifty years in the last?.

But it indicates that ?the country and our President would have to send to messages stimulating that foreign investment (because) there is no form of which we pruned to be successful in our program to attract investments if there are no stability messages, tranquillity, conversation with all the sectors?.

Cirilo sociologist Knoll notices that, in spite of the opportunities, there is in the country instability of legal and political character. ?There is a swing in the procedures that are troublesome for the investor?, it says.

Knoll recommends that the country works a strategy of projection of the country, that bets to the agro-industrial development and of companies with added value to foment quality uses, with good stable wages and. ?It is not only tried to attract the investment, but to promote that the investor also invests?, it indicates.

Montiel maintains that the challenges to attract the investment are to give legal stability and of respect to the law and the property, to develop the infrastructure of highways, ports, hospitals and to make agile the proceedings and procedures to make the region more competitive.

The economist maintains that there is to decide what type of investments is wanted and to understand what loves the investor to work with a strategy in that direction.