Revista MiPYMES 47 Ingles

DIVIDE AND……

Conquer? ….This title was established by me in early September without thinking that at the end of this magazine, it would be valid.

It would be incredible to speak about dialogue and communication, which already attached to the confrontation, generates hatred and fear, which adds at the beginning and then subtracts. So, despite four years of higher revenues ever seen in history, we see a divided and static country in its economy, polarized and politicized in a way that alienates the nation of the keys to successful force in most Latin America, especially Brazil, Chile, Peru and Colombia.

The lack of foreign and local investment is a consequence of four years of confrontation and hatred in a design that’s as unnatural as if we were implementing a testing laboratory. But the most serious of what we have stated above, has been having a harassing propaganda, but had very little communication. I wonder if perhaps this isn’t the result of someone having only ten fingers wanting to handle forty puppets.

Therefore we could apply the saying that “the devil is in details”.

September 30th was a fateful day. For lack of dialogue a police protest is initiated claiming “The Right to resistance” covered by the Constitution. A troop with lack of information and lots of aggression, low self-esteem, who feels unfairly attacked and cruelly treated; and for not having a proper control line becomes not only a claim but an uncontrollable mass of the President’s carelessness where the reason was put aside and passion is used. At that time an apocalyptic tragedy was designed from inappropriate political power which created an uncontrollable episode, unnecessary deaths and an active witch hunts. This time the police and armed troops were attacked and that is PEOPLE; we see broken families, mothers and wives begging to leave their children free.

Why do we come to this situation? Don’t you think it’s a lack of restraint? Doesn’t it seem being on the edge of chaos? Why not granting an amnesty? Perhaps this situation happened in Taura, which was a coup, and was given to pacify the country?

Examine thoroughly the events of September 30 th: people didn’t come out, people approved of neither one nor the other; it’s time; It’s time to reflect, forgive and rebuild.

Ing. Joyce de Ginatta Guayaquil, October 2010

E

V

E

N

T

S

The International Women’s Forum organized another great event in Montreal, Canada from the 13th to 15th of October entitled: “Water, Wealth and Power for the EcoCentury”.

We can observe from left to right: Mrs. Barbara Barrett, a member of the IWFMontana (USA); Mr. Guy Laliberté, founder and owner of Cirque du Soleil; Executive Director of FIE Mr. Giovanni Ginatta, and Mrs. Sara de Benalcázar, a member of IWF - Ecuador.

Now we see Mrs. Sara de Benalcázar and Mr. Fernando Clua participating in conferences of IWF-Canada

From left to right: Mrs. Zineb El Adaoui, member of IWF- Morocco; Mr. Giovanni Ginatta; Mr. Fernando Clua and Mrs. Sara de Benalcázar.

Mrs. Joyce de Ginatta, former President of IWF – Ecuador with Mrs. Asma Chaabi, President IWF – Morocco.

In these photos we see Mr. Guy Laliberté, founder and owner of Cirque du Soleil, giving a lecture.

Melchorita The most important investment in Peru’s history PERU; ENERGY LEADER IN SOUTH AMERICA Ing. David Lemor Director of Peru’s Corporate Affairs LNG Former Minister and Negotiator of the FTA with USA Melchorita is the first natural gas liquefaction plant that has been built in South America, making Peru’s leading regional energy. This work of the PERU LNG consortium was officially inaugurated on last June 10 th, and is to date the largest investment in the history of Peru, with a total investment of US$ 3.800 million dollars.

This mega structure of highest technological level, has contributed to strengthening the climate of confidence for investments, thanks to the legal framework and economic stability provided by Peru.

The productive process Melchorita plant is located at Km. 170 of the South Pan-American Highway between the cities of Chincha and Cañete, in an area of 521 hectares, and the plant itself for the processing of gas occupies 150 hectares. This place was chosen because it had the lowest environmental impact in terms of population density. It was also ensured that there weren’t near geological faults.

The plant has got the name after a beach where it’s located, in honor of Melchorita Saravia, a Peruvian beatified person who lived between 1867 and 1951. She is worshiped by devotees of the area of miraculous events attributed.

Melchorita produces liquefied natural gas LNG) through a cooling process that reduces the volume of gas up to 600 times, which facilitates storage and transport. The plant will process 620 million cubic feet per day (mmpcd) that consists in a processing list within a modular design that allows a future expansion; two gas storage tanks, the largest of Peru (each tank has a capacity storage of 130.000 m3 LNG) and a sea port of more than 1.3 kilometers which is protected by a breakwater of 800 meters that can receive LNG tankers with a capacity of 173.000 m3.

Melchorita is the result of a decade of planning and development which also included the installation of an important gas pipeline of 408 kilometers that will be used in part to fulfill the needs of the Peruvian domestic market.

Consortium The PERU LNG consortium is formed by four world-class power plants: Hunt Oil Company of the United States, with a participation of 50%; SK Energy of South Korea, with 20%; Repsol from Spain, with 20%; and Marubeni Corporation, with 10%.

In the construction stage there worked contractors such as: Chicago Bridge & Iron (CB&I), in charge of the engineering and construction of the plant, the consortium CDB (Saipem, Jan de Nul and Odebrecht), who were in charge of the engineering and construction of the maritime facilities, and Techint, in charge of the gas pipeline installation. Several Peruvian companies also participated in this project, such as: Graña and Montero, Cosapi, Translei, Minera San Martín, Cosmos, Aceros Arequipa, Técnicas Metálicas, Esmetal, SIMA and Unicon, among others.

The project had a funding of US$ 2.050 million dollars, given by well known entities such as the IDB, the World’s Bank IFC, The EximBank of the United States, the EximBank of Korea, the Agencia Italiana de Créditos de Exportación (SACE), the Societé Génerale, the BBVA, Crédit Agrícole-CIB, Sumitomo, ING, Mizuho and the Tokyo-Mitsubishi Bank. The Banco de Crédito of Peru and Scotiabank Peru financed the working capital of US$ 75 million and the partners

made a capital contribution of US$ 1.600 million. To all the above we must add the successful placement of US$ 200 million in bonds in the local market.

Construction and employment generation In the construction of the liquefaction plant, 114 kilometers of pipes were installed. In the 800 meters large breakwater, there were used 22 million tons of rocks from a quarry especially prepared for the project, located at 25 kilometers west of the plant.

Each gas storage tank has a circumference of 250 meters, a diameter of 78 meters and a height of 52 meters.

Along the pipeline were welded more than 33.000 joints and its equivalent is over a thousand kilometers of welding.

To install the gas pipeline, 10 million cubic meters of earth were moved.

During the construction stage, the project acquired local goods and services above $13 million dollars in provinces near to the Cañete and Chincha plants, as well as in the regions of Ayacucho and Huancavelica through which runs the installed pipeline. Around 30.000 work posts were generated, 90% of which were covered by Peruvians 100% of unskilled labor was hired in the area of influence of the project. More than 5.600 people of Cañete and Chincha worked simultaneously in the construction of the Melchorita Plant, while about 4.000 residents of rural communities located along the pipeline route in Huancavelica and Ayacucho worked in its installation.

Also through a program designed with TECSUP, 48 young professionals today are the first Peruvian certified operators worldwide of liquefaction plant of natural gas in South America.

Responsibility in socio-cultural environmental areas During the construction stage (2006-2010), there have been invested more than US$ 20 million dollars in social and environmental programs in which there has been implemented the highest local and international standards to protect the environment and local culture.

The program ForGestión was created to improve the quality of the projects and plan the investments of the municipal governments of the provinces of La Mar, Huamanga and Huaytará in Ayacucho, and over 300 municipal officials received capacitating.

More than 20 thousand families have been benefited from programs such as Allin Mincay which promotes agricultural competitiveness in the Andes and the ForSME project, which strengthens the small and medium enterprises on the coast.

Far-reaching environmental programs have been developed along the pipeline route and around the plant. These programs of bio diversity and conservation

exceed the highest local and international environmental standards, highlighting the programs of Social and Environmental Participatory Monitoring, the Monitoring Plan for Biodiversity and Archeological Monitoring Plan.

With close coordination with State’s institutions and with local communities, social programs were implemented oriented to improve de access conditions to health services which contributed to the task of improving the quality of education among the rural population of the area of influence.

Human health campaigns were developed, coordinating with the regional directorates of health and the micro-health networks, bringing specialized care to the villages and rural communities through mobile campaigns, to reach more than 30 thousand people with more than 60 thousand medical consultations.

In terms of educational support, 270 teachers were trained extending the benefit to more than 20 thousand students of the Ayacucho and Huancavelica region; Educational material was also donated to rural schools.

Special care was taken in the preservation and protection of cultural heritage dispersed in different regions of influence. With that objective, adequate procedures were done before starting any work in the areas in which the installations of the project would be constructed.

There were carried out rescue work and archaeological assessment and investigation on the basis of recovered materials High safety standards For the construction of this mega project, 72 million kilometers were traveled and more than 65 million man/hours were used, dealing with the difficult geography of the Andes and the limitations of the transportation system.

With the application of a management system based on high standards of industrial safety and occupational health, we reached a record of 12 million man/hours continuous safeties, which meant that during a period of 8 months, no accidents were recorded for a labor force of more than 6.000 workers at the Melchorita Plant.

This record has set a benchmark reached high for the energy industry in general as well as for the mega constructions in Peru.

The world’s highest pipeline The PERU LING pipeline has a length of 408 kilometers and entered the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s highest gas pipeline, because it crosses the Andes at an altitude of 4.901 meters above sea level.

Economic Impact The project during its construction phase contributed to the GDP and recorded a growth of 2% more; while in the stage of operation it will generate an average

of 1.000 million dollars annually in foreign exchange, as well as important contributions in taxes and royalties in benefit of the country.

Investments such as Melchorita, act as a magnet to attract other mega projects of investment, of which Peru has proven to be ready to receive and ensure the continuity of successful economic growth and social development in the last decade. Without doubt this is the result of the efforts of Peruvians who have paved the way for attracting investment ever seen in the country, which shows that Peru is now an icon of stability in the region. There are few countries around the world that are able attracting an investment of such dimensions.

FORCED LANDING Dr. Hernàn Perez Loose Coronel & Perez When in Montecristi the text of the new constitution was being prepared, we noticed the risks of introducing into the Supreme Law the governing program of the coalition that controlled the Assembly as well as their vision of society.

Neither one nor the other, are tasks of the Assemblies or constituent congress.

The exclusive function of a constitution in times of democracy is organizing and limiting the political power, and not designing how a civil society should be composed and less to impose a government agenda. The model of cultural life is an option the people should freely choose. And the governments’ agenda is something that democratically citizens should have the opportunity to choose through free and periodic elections. When political power have tried modeling a society with a life project, results have been disastrous. Fascists, communists and Falangist experiments are a good example of what happens when those in power trying to impose an ideal of life to society.

Not less successful were the attempts to transform into the constitution a government plan. The constitutionality of public policies removed from the democratic debate the profile of those policies, for we find them embodied in the constitution and policy makers should be limited simply to regulate them, not to discuss them. This has greatly reduced the possibility of the other life options than those who scored most during the drafting of the constitution.

In Ecuador, Montecristi’s experiment is producing a unique phenomenon. The decision to constitutionalize some options that are specific to the political debate – which eventually is reflected in laws – hasn’t imposed a kind of “straitjacket” to political trends of different sign of the majority that decided to make the mistake of translating in a constitutional way a government agenda. The funny part is that in this straitjacket –that should never have existed- those who at the time manufactured this have been trapped.

Of the several examples of this paradox perhaps the most astonishing, is what is happening with the legal labyrinth that has been created with respect to international arbitration by the State or other public entities. It was agreed in Montecristi to constitutionally proscribe any treaty containing clauses by which the State and private individuals resolved their trade disputes through an arbitration system. This appears in Article 422 of the Constitution. The rule was clearly aimed at the so-called bilateral investment treaties, and it was announced publicly by their authors. Of all the characteristics that these international agreements show, the Assembly chose arbitration as a kind of mortal sin. If the bilateral investment treaties are unconstitutional – and this is quite debatable - they are because they contemplate the international arbitration as the mechanism to resolve the differences between the Ecuadorian Estate and the foreign investor; there is nothing else. Was this necessary to appear in

the constitution? No. To subscribe or not treaties that contemplate the arbitration as the formula to resolve differences between the investor and the State, falls within the political agenda of the parties or political movements competing for power. To reflect this prohibition under constitutional standards, the matter was excluded from the political choices facing the electorate every four years. The Government might well have limited to finish these agreements because the mentioned act is mainly a political decision and nothing else.

The Constitutional Court in recent opinions has examined several of these TBI. It was done by the request of the President as a prelude to their denunciation.

The Court has said that these treaties are unconstitutional because international arbitration between the state and a private one is not compatible with the Constitution. At the end of the day what the court has said is what article 422 says.

For if the State cannot enter into treaties in which it’s committed to resolving their trade disputes with private law persons through the arbitration system, it’s obviously unable doing so through any pathway. Through what other means that aren’t a treaty can the State consent to their trade disputes with foreign private companies through international arbitration? One of those ways is through a contract. Nowadays, it’s recognized that States give their consent to foreign private companies to arbitrate their disputes with foreign private companies by a treaty or a contract. If Article 422 has declared unconstitutional the agreement to arbitration by the way of a treaty, it’s logical that legally cannot give such consent either through a contract without violating the Constitution. It wouldn’t be compatible with the constitution for the State obtaining a result by a contract, when that result is forbidden to obtain through a treaty.

Nonetheless the previous, the government has been submitting to the jurisdiction of international arbitration tribunals, for them to be – not the Ecuadorian courts- the ones to solve the commercial disputes arising between him and private counterparts. The government soon discovered that nowadays it’s almost impossible for a globalized world, that a contractor of a certain size or foreign investor wants to contract with Ecuador if any discrepancies are subject to the jurisdiction of any foreign arbitration court. The most obvious evidence of this reality is in the proposed model contract to oil companies for their participation agreements to migrate to one of its services. In the mentioned model contract the arbitration is stated as a way to overcome the gaps between the State and the oil companies.

However, the decisions of the Constitutional Court are very clear. The Ecuadorian State can only bring their dispute with foreign investments to the jurisdiction of Ecuadorian Courts. It could be that the Court’s decisions don’t convince us –as this is a fact- but that is another matter.

How can the government then contractually subject to the jurisdiction of international arbitration courts, -something that, incidentally is allowed to make in dozens of countries around the world – if the constitution forbids entering into treaties that address precisely this submission? By way of force; that’s the only explanation. If this solution is to reassure foreign investors, that has to be seen.

The previous shouldn’t be the standard by which to measure the constitutionality or not of a governmental decision.

The approval of a law that allows Ecuador subject to the jurisdiction of foreign courts doesn’t solve the problems. Once more we should wonder if the State is allowed getting a result with the approval of a law if this result is banned for the constitution to obtain it by the way of an international convention.

No matter how complex it may seem, the only way out of this maze is through a constitutional amendment to abolish the prohibition of Article 422.The legal uncertainty and insecurity that this regulation has created, is the price which we are nowadays paying for the decision to enshrine in the constitution a decision that is typical of ordinary politics, not of constituent politics. The paradox of this case is that the consequences are being paid not by who disagreed with the majority in Montecristi, but who at the time adopted this decision. Those were the ones who raised their hands to approve Article 422, prohibiting the State of its consent by treaty to open disputes with foreign private institutions which were lifted again to denounce a series of bilateral investment treaties for containing an international arbitration clause and will end raising their hand to pass a law that allows the State to do just that.

Cuba: 20 years later Dr. Manuel Hinds El Salvador’s Former Secretary of the Treasury Twenty years ago the Soviet Union entered into an irreversible process of decline that ended with its total collapse. When the first symptoms of this process became evident, the faithful to the Marxist religion shuddered around the world but thought that the regime just needed a little adjustment time.

Unfortunately for them, the pieces which they saw falling weren’t of repulse but the very structure. Soon, to their astonishment, communism collapsed not only in the Soviet Union but in all the countries it had enslaved in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and China too.

Now, 20 years later, the same symptoms are beginning to be felt in Cuba. As it happened then, Communists believe that they only portend some adjustments.

But as it happened 20 years ago, they should be aware that the Cuban regime is about to collapsing in the same way that the Soviet Union.

To sense the imminence of the catastrophe, it’s necessary to recall the essence of the proletarian dictatorship, the regime to which everybody calls communism (which was the one existing in the Soviet Union and exists nowadays in Cuba).

Under the dictatorship of the proletariat, all production is in hands of the State and is also the one who assigns what each person should consume. In this way, bureaucracy decides which things and in what quantities the population will be supplied and which not. The government then distributes the goods through ration cards, which are distributed among the population with coupons, which entitles them to a unit of a product; as an example: one tooth paste.

So, for these people to buy them, they need two things: money to pay the price and the coupon that allows them purchasing it.

There is one exception –certain vegetables, - that can be bought and sold in the so called farmer’s markets-. The idea is that the whole production and consumes, go through the planning system and rationing.

This system, besides of slavering producers and consumers to the will of the leaders and bureaucrats that decide everything which everybody must do and consume, generated two endemic diseases: the State’s inefficiency and corruption. Because the State’s inefficiency, the production was always little and of bad quality, so what the population received in their rationing coupons was very poor. The problem this situation caused worsened with the corruption. The way this worked was that the communist leaders who controlled the production and distribution of goods and services produced by the State, grabbed them and sold them on the black market at much higher prices. The profits allowed them to buy more things on the black market for their own consume – things they couldn’t find or were limited by rationing.

Of course the more merchandise you could find on the black market, the less in the rationing system. Stalin controlled this corruption with fear. But as Stalin died, the terror decreased because all the leaders wanted to avoid that one of

their members acquired so much power as to killing them – which was what Stalin did with his predecessors. Without fear corruption increased. This was slowly destroying the system for three decades.

When Gorbachev came to power, he reacted releasing more and more control over state-owned production units (the equivalent of firing millions of people in the public sector) and transferring more goods of the rationing books to the black market reducing State control over economy on both sides: production and consumption.

Once the government began with this process, it lost control of the economy and the regime’s fall was imminent. Once the fear of operating in the black market now called free market) was lost, corruption in the public sector worsened; official stores received less merchandise of the producers who stole more and sold more on the black or free market. With the government provision falling, the government fired more people; more products of the ration bag were taken away, and so, in a vortex in which the regime collapsed.

All the above mentioned is happening in Cuba. As well as in the Soviet Union, State inefficiency and corruption have undermined the regime for many decades. The government will fire half million people of the public sector and is reducing the goods provided by the ration book. In a short period of time everything will be on the black market. But worse than the Soviet Union, that produced many things, Cuba almost didn’t produce anything, so that the private sector has no basis from which to start or is organized to do so. The result will be high unemployment and hunger. All the lies will be exposed.

All this is very uncomfortable for the leaders of the Latin American Left. They will have to explain why after a tyranny of more than fifty years, the only inheritance that Fidel Castro and the communists are leaving, are economic backwardness, poverty and social disorder. They should prepare themselves, because when Cuba will begin to crumble, it will be very quickly, and it’s clear that the process has already begun.

The leaders don’t ignore what is happening. Delegates of the Sao Paulo’s Forum who met between the 8th and 11th of October in San Salvador must have had a sense of limitation in their own history.

The Forum was founded in 1990 to discuss the biggest catastrophe that Marxist had ever suffered –the collapse that communism was having around the world, as evidenced to date by the fall of the Berlin’s Wall, the serious economic weakening of the Soviet Union, relaxation of control over its satellites and the mutation of China’s economic system from communism to capitalism without restrictions. The fundamental issue was the survival of communist movements in Latin America in economic(it was obvious that the economic support that these movements received from the Soviet Union where coming to an end) and ideological terms (Marxism had been discredited in the world and the communist parties were disappearing form left to right. Main concern of the worries was Cuba’s fate, a country that wasn’t (and isn’t) economically viable and therefore depended totally of the Soviet Union’s subsidy for just survive.

In the immediately following years the Forum’s concerns became reality. The Soviet Communist regime and the Soviet Union with its satellites collapsed catastrophically. Communism disappeared as a world force. Only two countries, far behind the two, kept alive their Marxists regimes: North Korea and Cuba.

Marxism remained an ideological and political force in Latin America only. Cuba just managed surviving with a worsening of repression until, one decade later President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, based on record oil prices, replaced the Soviet Union as the main source of funding for the radical left in the continent.

Today, as then, the issues of the socialists come from a combination of voter disenchantment with serious financial problems. Even if these problems are evident in the whole region, it has been most notable in Venezuela. With the elections held few weeks ago, the electorate has begun restricting the enormous power that for years has been of President Hugo Chavez. With the opposition controlling a substantial portion of the assembly, the President will find it increasingly difficult to allocate at will, large sums of Venezuelan taxpayers. Adding to all the above, the growing economic problems in that country, the capacity of President Hugo Chavez of financing the radical left throughout the continent, is declining very rapidly.

As a consequence of all this situation, Venezuela isn’t able to continue supporting Cuba at its current levels of consume, which has turned urgent the mentioned reforms. These reforms, similar as the ones Gorbachev introduced 20 years ago to the deceased Soviet Union, are the signs of terminal decline of the Cuban communist regime. These events propose to the radical parties, the same problems Fidel Castro had when founding the Sao Paulo’s Forum: the discrediting of the radical message of economic failure and social leaders of radical regimes in Latin America (mainly Venezuela and Cuba) and depletion resources that these regimes used to finance the radical movements in other countries of the region. This is the same thing again, only at a much lesser scale, because the communist power which before reached the whole world, is greatly diminished because it now only reaches Latin America.

Ironically, this is happening just two years after these radical parties predicted the death of capitalism, thinking the whole world would blame the global crisis that exploded in 2008. They never imagined that two years later, the electorates of Europe, USA and other developed and developing countries would move to the right because they have understood that the failure wasn’t because of a capitalist market, but the excesses of government expenditure and debt generated by populist policies. This movement towards the right doesn’t forebode the death of moderate leftists parties likely will return to power in many countries where elections have now lost. But it clearly shows that populism – even the relatively moderate, not to mention the radical one- has become a losing position nowadays.

The agenda of the Forum was important for the radical parties as well as for the founders 20 years ago. With a discredited ideology and its sources of funding drying up, parties of the Forum are fighting for their existence. Everything indicates that the Forum may be preceded on its own decline.

The Earth is flat Dr. Diego Ordóñez Political Analyst The Project of the Production Code and the draft of Land Law, instruments that the government says are for the development and promotion of production, contain allusions and conclusions that require ideological debate overcome realities. Something similar to be discussed about the roundness of the planet.

Until the Renaissance the lack of any empirical evidence of the Earth’s shape remained in doubt and was scientifically resolved by the material hypothesis that humanity lives in a sphere.

During the second half of last century, military and ideological bipolarity of the Cold War, the romantic excitement of Castro’s and Che’s epic myth, led social scientists to promote ideas that became popular, designed to sort the farm property and break the dependency of the empire and the metropolis.

Che Guevara had announced the revolution in Latin America and plunged into the mountains seeking to create his army among the peasants. Reactive response was triggered by the Kennedy’s initiative of Alliance for Progress which where the reasons for land reform processes.

They began in Ecuador in 1964 and ended with the extinction of the Instituto Ecuatoriano de Reforma Agraria (IERAC).

On the other hand, leftist sociologists headed by a young Fernando Enrique Cardoso, configured a set of ideas called “dependency theory”, which later took shape in an economic model called “import substitution”.

The reasoning was to turn to countries in process of development, - which in the international division of work form the periphery being the developed countries the center – in producing finished goods and not raw materials, acquired at low prices by economies of center, were returned to the periphery in secondary goods at low prices.

During the first part of the seventies, in Ecuador were issued the so-called development laws, sponsored by the sudden oil wealth to transfer resources and incentives for private sector industries to be installed and not financially dependent on primary products.

This model was extended in Latin America under the auspices of CEPAL. The two processes: of agrarian reform and import substitution, walked together under the assumption that Third World small economies would flourish producing secondary goods; and that the partition of agricultural property, would cause a production revolution.

Just as obscurantism had believers in the flatness of the world, enthusiasts’ sociologists and economists said that we are moving towards a second independence. This model failed. Empirically, as well as the roundness of the planet was confirmed, evidence has shown that splitting the land doesn’t increase agricultural production; and that subsidies and direct stimulation from the Estate towards production sector won’t promote growth but on the opposite, it will increase comfort and inefficiency and are sustainable only as long as the State builds resources to sustain support.

At the end of the decade of the 80´s a new trend states that the reduction of barriers to the movement of goods and investment can be more efficient than the so-called “endogenous growth”. The weakness of the models of “dependency theory” was that growth in the supply of production must be accompanied not only of favorable domestic conditions but access to consumer markets in countries with high levels of income and that means opening for Imports and Exports without further restrictions.

Latin America had tried models of reduced integration, because of historic variables with countries of the region at same level of development and no additional production. Pompous declarations of brotherhood and Bolivarianism intentions led to integrated markets and were just rhetoric.

As time went through, a mature Cardoso turned into President of Brazil for two terms in a row, setting out his ideas according to reality and embraced with enthusiasm and pragmatism the currents of thought aimed to reducing government intervention in the economy.

As Pinochet’s dictatorship ended, the Coalition for Democracy, formed by the Left parties, decided to keep the liberal model they had inherited: trade liberalization and private investment. Once this is mentioned, it’s surprising that there is insufficient evidence in the economic experience, a high dose of cosmic mislaid, has led the Ecuadorian Government to insisting in the same failed alternatives to promote economic growth.

It’s evident that the main intention of the late promoters of socialism is that the State is the propelling force of economy; that it keeps in charge of maintaining the administration of energy resources and assumes the planner role of what should be produced and even what universities should teach.

Without bringing the discussion to the other ideological extreme that promotes the extinction of the state of regulation and control the concept of GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY should put the government under the condition of seeking the best, most efficient, productive and honest resource exploitation of their property under the assumption of the patrimonial meaning of the state administration, causes inefficiency, instability and corruption; and the virtue of competition of increasingly integrated markets, may put further trade liberalization without waiting for the productive sector to reach tiny internal market dimension.

Let’s see some textbooks in particular, THE LAW OF LAND, highly ideological, believes that there is an unfair distribution of land, that there has been an agrarian counter-reform,” driven by sectors that have historically concentrated land and power ideologues of foreign powers which sponsored the land market speech as an unique mechanism of redistribution of land ownership.

This text really discusses the concept of “food sovereignty” which rose to the category of constitutional regulation, for which was attributed to the State’s competition to regulate the use and ownership of the land to prevent that the use in non-food production reduce the national capacity to feed themselves without relying on imported agricultural products.

The intended constitutional mechanism is the creation of a “national earth fund” to give it to small farmers. This new “agrarian reform” in addition to the characteristics of what started thirty six years ago, includes an ethnic element foreign to non indigenous residents of Ecuador and in particular the coast, that is, the mystic and mythic relationship with the “Pacha Mama”. Let’s analyze the effects of limiting Agricultural property, in terms of extension, the expropriation given to “small farmers”. The agrarian reform sought reducing the social tensions that could lead to subversive movements. During more than twenty years, many farms were divided and given to the huasipungueros (in the mountains), and in theory everything was solved. However the effect was that, except in very few cases of cooperative or communal organizations, small plots were used for small crops.

Afterwards, the land was divided successively among the heirs of the dead huasipungueros, until they served only for living spaces. Statistics confirm that the agrarian growth, as a contribution of GDP, did not come from small farms, but large investments in food or new investments in agriculture of unconventional flowers and fruit.

Land is a production factor, which requires of capital, technology and work to turn into a production means. The land alone, doesn’t turn a peasant into a producer, understood as such a condition that the land capacity to supply products to the market.

However, the capital, following the revolutionary logic, must come from public funds as well as the training and technology. That is, the production factors supplied by the State in aid of the poorest to achieve the goal of “a society of producers”.

In this scheme, we will have taken the step to convert to agriculture in livelihood, or at least to greater contributor of national wealth?

State contributions will not guarantee productivity and scale, so that even if the credits are provided to ensure public money to the land, “small producers” well qualified by the paternalism of the model, wouldn’t have the conditions to recover the investment generate surplus for the payment of principal, interests and rent. This project is so skewed that when defining the common place of “social function of the land” it is recognized if it serves the small producers, and

indigenous communities, without specifying whether they produce or not and ascribes the mentioned condition to other owner only if it is cultivated.

As a final remark to this chapter, I would add that the land, like capital, should be used in the way in which the owners decide. To producing as a part of a State’s planning, isn’t rational for no other reason but because that mechanism wasn’t efficient in economies that had been tried before.

The draft of the Production Code, incredibly states that the lack of intelligence provoked little if efficient import substitution model. With that background, added the qualifier “selective” with which we must be sure now that it will work. It isn’t necessary to dive into the extensive text, since in the third paragraph of the Statement of Reasons are distortions that result as every syllogism of false premises operates, causing false conclusions. The plan says that the success of economies that have improved the living standard of its inhabitants should be analyzed with the benefit of inventory and mentions some objections: 1) that imports substitution was a temporary model and wasn’t accompanied by policies to improve productivity and export promotion. 2) That there was a trend of using “increasingly technological innovation factors”; 3) that competitiveness, infrastructure, services, institutionalization, clear rules and market regulation are prerequisites for productive development; 4) and that economic growth must be the result of diversification of productive sectors with high technological contents. I must confess that giving a logic structure to these elements, has been a difficult task, while aligning them with the concept of the of the sensitive import substitution and for the contradictions with the concepts of market and competition. Let’s clarify. A model of endogenous growth” and smart or dumb replacement, selective or total imports, involving the establishment of import restrictions, stimulations via subsidized credits and protections including captive markets. This was fully operated until the beginning of 1998, in President Borja’s period with the first tariff reform and then with the first Andean market opening in the government of President Sixto Duran Ballen.

Productivity is achieved with an efficient use of resources and incorporation of knowledge and technology which allows obtaining products of better characteristics. However, this objection contained in this project makes sense as the vision of reducing the domestic market, reduces the options that protect consumer products that incorporate technological innovation in their manufacture.

There is no explanation in the setting of ideas that develops the project which I’m talking about, the allusion contained in objection 3. Planning what to produce promote from the Estate’s side that planning eliminates the private entrepreneurship and desire to innovate and compete. If there isn’t competitiveness, what’s the point in improving competition? That market condition occurs when many manufacturers offer products to the consumer who chooses the variable that motivates its consumption. Finding the value proposition that leads to consumption is an effort that does research and product development.

Finally, objection 4 like all the others doesn’t fit in a closed market scenario and is prone to fantasizing, given the poor level of elementary and secondary education and the almost total absence of research and generation of new knowledge that is prevalent in the education system in general terms. Let’s look at this unfortunate collision of reality aspiration. If expropriation and redistribution of land is accepted, besides of capital and minimum technology that smallholders would require to producing –in the event that it doesn’t happen as it did in the past after the agricultural land partition – as the SENPLADINOS would have expected that smallholder produce “high technological content”. The above seems difficult.

Successful stories of real Enterprise life (Transcripts of the Conference held on August 2, 2010) Lorena Bruzone de Torres Owner of DOLCE INCONTRO Cafeteria Good morning, my name is Lorena Bruzone de Torres and I’m owner of DOLCE INCONTRO Cafeterias.

First of all I must say that I’m not very good when talking before an audience.

I’m good creating new recipes and make sweets. However, I was invited to this panel and I think my story will be helpful for other people, especially for young ones just like you to encourage them to achieve their dreams and succeed.

As I was telling you before I’m DOLCE INCONTRO’S owner and July will mark our 6th anniversary working in three stores; one is located in Urdesa, another one is in Riocentro Ceibos and the third one is in Riocentro Entreríos. Next October we´ll be opening another cafeteria downtown and for December our fifth expansion of Mall del Sol, next to the Sonesta Hotel. We will then have five cafeterias in a six year period of time.

The story really starts years ago. All my life I was the one who made the cakes for birthdays and family gathering. If each one of us would take a dish, the dessert always was my specialty; if it was an invitation they bought the ingredients, gave them to me and I made the cake or sweet.

My first customers were my family and friends and that’s how I got my first clientele. My daughter helped me doing Business Cards which were given out to my first customers. This was around 1997 and you want to know how it worked. Very simple. I had a normal life and if someone called me for an order, I went to the supermarket, bought the ingredients and made the cake.

Little by little, and as I´ve always believed that the best advertising is word of mouth, the clientele was increasing and so did cakes; I suddenly realized that I wasn’t able fulfilling all the work and the boy who before helped cleaning my house, started helping me doing things such as: peeling apples, helping me to beat cakes, etc. So, I had my first employee.

In 1999, year in which my son moved to USA, things didn’t fit anymore in my kitchen; I went daily to the supermarket and spent the whole day making cakes and sweets by order. I had to turn my son’s room into a production room; I bought counters, racks, two blenders, refrigerators and also hired my second employee.

From that moment on I started creating cakes and sweets, mixing flavors and textures; that’s how my first creation “The Chocolate Fantasy” began. I still

remember that I invented that cake one night that I couldn’t sleep and began mixing flavors and textures. Next morning when everybody got up, they saw my new cake on the table, asking what flavor it was. I answered: It’s my chocolate fantasy. After my first creation which was a complete success, I started to experiment with other flavors and create a whole line of pies, cakes and cheese cakes. This was the point in which I realized that I had the potential to create new recipes.

When you believe in what you’re doing besides of enjoying it, rest assured that you get to do great things.

Besides cooking, there is something that has always fascinated me which is photography, so I had the habit of taking pictures of all my sweets and I built a small album which I carried along with me in my purse. That’s how I started having new customers and orders at the same time, including orders from cafeterias and clubs around the city.

We created the name of DOLCE INCONTRO and the first logo in 2001. The name came from a brainstorm and to combine words and phrases, as sitting with my daughter, my husband and my parents at their kitchen counter, until we found the perfect one: DOLCE INCONTRO which means SWEET ENCOUNTER. The logo was made with the aid of a designer, who was always guided by us until we got what we wished to have.

That’s how I kept on growing at home with a brand; I wasn’t going to the supermarket any more, but I had direct contact with the suppliers which sent the products by truck directly to my home. You can still see once in awhile, a confused truck driver stopping at my home instead of my business.

At Christmas time, I started doing small decorated Christmas cakes which were wrapped and ready to be given as a gift. The house was madness and there were cakes all around the place: in the living room, on chairs, on beds. I had three stoves with oven in my house and had to place one refrigerator and freezer in the living room because there wasn’t any other free space.

My customers also called me up and asked me to sell them small portions of different cakes so they could try different tastes. From time to time I encouraged including two or three varieties to be sold in portions over the weekend, but they didn’t last even two hours as they were sold.

In 2004, production increased so much that there wasn’t space anymore in my house to place the equipment or having more employees, so it was the perfect time to start with my shop. The first thing we thought about is looking for a space in a shopping center having in mind the delinquency on the streets. The above didn’t work out because they didn’t give me the opportunity to enter because I wasn’t known.

All the above didn’t stop me and I kept searching until we found a very small place located in Guayacanes Street, Urdesa, which seemed to be a perfect place having next to it a hairdresser.

The next thing I’ll mention isn’t exactly an ideal example of finances and many of the expert panelists, who are here, will think I’m crazy, but it was so. As I didn’t receive the approval of any bank I decided that I was going to selffinance. There wasn’t a risk analysis, no financial planning; I only knew that it was the time to start my business believing always in what I do. So the way of self-financing was to filling the quotas of all mine, my husband’s and father’s credit cards and bought all I needed. I know this isn’t the best financing advice but it’s the way it happened. What you can draw from this is if you truly believe in what you do and are willing to put your heart, go ahead, do it, pursue your dream and achieve it.

So, in July 2004 we opened our small place with six employees, in which we had a small glass cabinet, one coffee maker, 4 tables and chairs and that was it. My daughter and I were attending in uniform with our aprons and caps and in the back we had a small kitchen. Three months later the space I had for the kitchen was so small that I asked the owner to rent me more space to expand my production. People’s acceptance was so good and with unexpected growth, so I asked the owner of the house to rent me the whole house, finishing the year with 13 employees. In January 2005, we started remodeling and extending the place.

There is something important to be highlighted and we are proud having credit for it, it’s that since we opened our cafeteria, the Guayacanes street turned into a commercial street and is filled with all the food outlets at the time found and the other Sweet store which was very close at the time, was forced to improve: they fixed up their shop, set up tables and chairs, they changed their image and fixed the sidewalk. I believe that business success is not just having a personal improvement, but having a positive impact on others.

At that time and the people’s request, I started selling salty snacks and I called them “salted snacks”. I had a ham and cheese sandwich, hayacas and corn cake. All of them were a great success and logically sales grew.

After a few months, we received the call from Riocentro Los Ceibos to install a Kiosk or Serving Counter. This really touched very much because after the refusal I had had at the beginning of the shopping centers, now they were looking for me.

Growth continued and by the end of the year we had 40 employees.

Due to the wide people’s acceptance, in 2007 we had to do some changes in our two locations; we remodeled again in Urdesa and in Riocentro we moved from the Kiosk to a large place in which we currently are. Here too we took a step forward because we started a new line of salted snacks such as: pannis, quesadillas, cheddar sticks among other things. This was a boom that triggered our business.

In July 2008 we opened our third place at Riocentro Entreríos.

Taking advantage of the opening and that our salted menu was a resounding success, we increased our snack list: pannis, salads, wraps, lasagnas, pizzas, fruit juices and frozen.

So, we stopped being a candy shop and became a Cafeteria.

Taking advantage of Riocentro Entreríos remodeling, we extended our place and once again increased our menu implementing the children’s menu and the wine chart among other things.

We are constantly thinking about our customers so we created a coloring booklet of activities for children to be distracted while waiting for food. We also have Special Offers and are working on the launch of gift cards and a line of promotional items.

Plans for the future are many. There have always been people interested in acquiring franchises for inside and outside the country, so we´re working on that project.

One of the reasons of our success is that the quality of our products hasn´t changed since the first day. Our customers can be confident that if you go to Dolce Incontro, they won´t find surprises that reduced the quality to cut costs.

This is forbidden for us because the company’s policy is “quality comes first”.

As I told you before, we currently have three locations: in Urdesa, Riocentro Los Ceibos and Riocentro Entreríos. In October we will be opening the fourth location downtown and in December our fifth location in Sonesta Hotel next to Mall del Sol shopping center. Think of five stores in a period of six years and have gone from a tiny candy shop to a well known café as we are nowadays, is something that sometimes even I can’t understand.

I only know that I believe in what I do and follow what I’ve always believed in.

We’ve had the pleasure and pride in listening to our customers comparing us to other giant chains and saying they prefer us.

As I mentioned before, if you put your heart in what you do, you have many opportunities to succeed.

When I talk about putting your heart into it, I mean doing everything with excellence.

I’m talking about doing something because you love it.

I´m talking about your life policy to maintaining always the quality of the things you do.

To think doing things as they were for yourself or your family with love and effort.

Your business shouldn’t reflect desperation to do a lot of money fast, because in my opinion it’s not the way for a long- term success.

Your business should reflect the desire to make things well.

Let your customer know and note that in everything you do, you put your heart into it.

This is the best advice I can give you this morning hoping that my story will let you know that to succeed in life you don’t have to be a millionaire or wait for someone to do things for you; and even worse to complain about things not going the way you wish or blaming the economy.

To achieve your dreams you should pursue them.

Believe in what you do, put your heart into it and be successful.

Thank you very much

The prison of ignorance Dr. David Samaniego Torres General Vice Chancellor of Espiritu Santo University Specialties Nobody chooses the time to be born; even more, nobody chooses to be born.

Life comes to the aid of various agents prior to being that is to be constituted.

Others are the ones which drew up a plan for us and created the circumstances for a potential life to become a reality. This is a fact which has to be considered in first place. Even wildly arrogant and rulers need to know that their lives emerged from reasons beyond their control. In other words: we didn’t create ourselves, they created us; we weren’t born of an individual plan; we are an external planning without knowing for what we are here and without wanting to be here on earth.

The above paragraph puts us were we belong; we were brought to this world without our consent and here we are. This reality gives us a key question: was this intrusion into our destiny and the expropriation of our will and decision worth? Our response to this question marks our existence and sets the rules towards self-fulfillment. I don’t want to enter to what you might want or wish, for the universe is as broad as broad is the number of the earth’s inhabitants. We are an explosion of desires and experiences that are impossible to organize or placing them in an ostensibly ordered space. I rather tell you my experiences and from them to justify the title of these lines: “The prison of ignorance”.

1. I never questioned about why, before I was born, why I’m alive. I just live.

Being seventy five years old I know that I’ve lived and that life is the greatest miracle of the universe. To feel, think, laugh, grief, reflect, walk, breath, taste, hear the birds chipping or the arrival of the waves; this and some more are the sensors of a living being that is connected to the rhythm of nature.

2. I’ve always been grateful to my parents and God for giving me life, for waking me up each morning, for having the capacity to expressing my ideas, for being born in Ecuador.

3. Life is demanding. You can’t cope with an existence from the ignorance of the basic principles governing nature, interpersonal relationship, selfaffirmation of intrinsic values, or the course life has to take. Although it was given to us without our consent, it’s impossible to carry it worthily if we don’t examine the interior of our commitments daily.

4. When I look back I know that nothing happened by coincidence; I have the certainty that failures and successes are my rubric and also the presence of so many actors who were close to me. To retrace the path taken is not only about completed projects and shattered illusions by the circumstantial reality of distant times. Nothing gives us free in life; perhaps the only granted thing in the beginning was receiving life, and then, to sort of buying and doing our own through the same challenges that life presents us.

The above mentioned until this point may serve as a backdrop to wave in human life’s order to live with wisdom, serenity, strength and satisfaction, essential elements in building one’s personality.

Breaking ties I don’t think that it’s an exaggeration to say that all human life is a continuous effort, conscious or unconscious, to break ties, to start your own life, to destroy chains to gain freedom. We weren’t born free and were created with libertarian options to convert them into violations, free attitudes in behavior consistent with a firm permanent emancipation.

If breaking chains and ties to be free is an existential requirement of every human being, let’s consider a number of prisons that must be forced until a person can take in hand the reins of its life and declare its freedom.

At birth we face a world made by its history, its present and what’s coming, unknown elements for who bursts in this scenario. From this moment on the newborn faces a number of challenges to be breaking the veil of prison and ignorance. Disregard or ignore, per se, isn’t a condition that damages the personal integrity because in one way or another everybody ignores something, knowing that only knowledge, sets us free. Remaining ignorant and do nothing out of it, becomes a suicidal and reprehensible process, to say the least. 







The entry of an infant into what will be its habitat for a given time is the most pitiful; everybody celebrates the birth of someone who doesn’t know he was born without knowing the world in which he is, besides of ignoring why and who gave him life inviting him to be part of society.

The recently appeared, among many other beings of the animal kingdom, is the most helpless. If we watch a newborn calf, we are able seeing it in few hours jumping and in few days or weeks become independent and able to begin looking for food to survive.

A child needs two or three years until it places in society, but even its future is sentenced to rely on the experiences of his early years, mostly unconscious, because they mark the future man or woman. Parents or tutors make possible that the infant can move from helplessness to gradually enjoy its freedom.

The vicissitudes of the newborn are the gateway of freedom or they become a lifelong chain to mark the presence of bystanders.

Those who take care of infants in their first years, are the ones to mark on them ways of being and acting which are their hard disk called to be present during the existence of a newborn.

To attend study centers of diverse levels is the easiest and adequate way to have the indispensable tools for a successful and happy life. Nothing like nowadays, knowledge has become the oxygen that protects human life; without it it´s impossible to place ourselves in the current society which is known as the knowledge society, the same way as in other eras there was spoken about agricultural societies or industrial societies.





Of all the above it is clear from whom isn´t inserted into the world of knowledge, excludes himself from a decent future scenario for a successful and healthy self-realization. Accumulated ignorance will be a burden that prevents or delays the individual’s development.

It isn’t difficult thinking that a country with a high percentage of functional illiterate is destined to fail, losing the many possibilities for sustained progress. Ignorance is a contagious decease. The ignorant status remains indefinitely because unknowns what lies behind the veil that covers its eyes; is incapable of looking beyond their noses; doesn’t understand the desire of a few to seek new goals; it’s a burden on the country’s progress. In the measure in which a country has few or many people with knowledge, it will be a developed country or will lose the capacity of insertion in a globalized world.

Ways of leaving prison 



Prisoners are deprived of their freedom and live in prisons for a period of time determined by law according to the severity committed against an individual or the society. The prisoner who wants to recover its freedom is forced to undertake a series of necessary actions. I’ll state some: awareness of the reasons for the deprivation of freedom and the decision to recovering it as soon as possible through gradual knowledge of what to do to recover it. The sentenced to death or life imprisonment, knowing that will never regain the lost freedom, usually opt for radical solutions in search of freedom.

The person who is a prisoner of his own ignorance, that prevents time progress and transform into something useful for him, family and society. Needs to follow the logical steps of that prisoner who decides to leave jail. The first thing he has to do by logic is to convince himself that ignorance is a major sin and will never get fulfilling his most secret desires. He must decide in a brave and effective way to get rid of ignorance and start substituting it with a gradual knowledge that will lead to better and faster progress. As well as the usual state of ignorance builds ignorance almost imperceptibly, in the same way, knowledge becomes an endless stairs that each day increases a new step. Once the initiation process has come to an end, and taken the resolution to abandon a state of starvation and ignorance, it´s indispensable to draw a work plan with goals, objectives, timing and specifications as a result to where you want to go.

Somewhere I mentioned that life is a permanent action of breaking chains and ties, facing new challenges. When a person enters to the world of knowledge, doing it by necessity or for the pleasure of knowing, then you can say that the path has begun and will never end, because being so vast the field of knowledge, new discoveries and findings tend to make the trip a happy ending

process, I say fortunately because it doesn’t extinguish the enjoyment of getting to know.

Hunger for knowledge This topic is worth explaining with a very simple metaphor. The human body when not fed for a few hours feels a slight discomfort that then tends to increase hunger; I’m hungry its said and we’re looking for something to fill our stomach.

Feeling hunger isn’t a complex sensation or the result of reasoning: it’s something spontaneous, natural, and automatic. Hunger for knowledge presupposes these elements: feeling the need to know, seek knowledge, satisfy curiosity, assimilate new concepts and look for different experiences.

Permanent dissatisfaction for not knowing more of what is known necessarily leads to the study of everyday reality, to find excuses for knowing something else, to take over science to defuse an existential requirement, which is, to satisfy the hunger to know, which is nothing else than a hardened fight against ignorance. I suggest four pillars that can serve to underpin our purpose to know, as a lifelong commitment.

Sense: The point isn’t to know per se, the indiscriminate, disorderly or vacuous way of knowing. It’s necessary to select the fields closest to our abilities to lead our efforts, our time and other resources to the attainment of objectives.

Serenity: The world won’t end tomorrow. No matter how early you get up, dawn won’t come earlier. It’s necessary to stay calm, have order and organization; you have to set steps and fulfill terms.

Intensity: Is not opposed with the courageous dedication to the study and the pursuit of knowledge. It’s true that the world won’t end tomorrow, but it’s also true that life isn’t enough to satisfy our hunger for knowledge.

Satisfaction: the daily quest to find something else should be enjoyable, that is, should arouse in us the satisfaction of knowing. When traveling through my country’s highways, I enjoy studying the road maps, the areas to be covered and when the trip gets to its end, I mark on the map what impressed me more, which things awakened my senses that delicious feeling of something beautiful and pleasant. If we have to learn many things we don’t like it because they are necessary for our jobs, it’s also worth studying those that we like and aren’t useful for work but fill our spirit increasing the joy for life.

Leaving the PRISON OF IGNORANCE is a duty, a commitment and a useful way to honor our rational nature.

Amanda, Barcelona and the code Ing. Giovanni Ginatta Fie’s Executive Director Historically, Governments have used public policy mechanisms to intervene in our country’s economy. Several have used subsidies, other have used another type of inventive from tax reductions to tariff barriers. We have had everything in Ecuador. Few days ago I watched a documentary based in the book (best seller) called Freakonomics. This book makes a clear analysis of how incentives and motivation work on human activities.

One of the mentioned book writer’s makes reference to a very domestic case: his daughter Amanda didn’t learn to potty. Although his wife tried teaching her to go to the bathroom, she didn’t go. Her father, an Economist, decided taking a more active role in this problem by using his knowledge of Economics. He started offering her a small M&M chocolate package (her favorite) for each time she would go potty. Her father was proud of his strategy because it worked well.

Amanda almost immediately left the diapers and began using the toilet as an adult. Her father gave Amanda as promised, one small M&M bag for every successful event. The economic incentive worked! Amanda turned into an expert using the toilet and didn’t use diapers anymore in an impressive way. But what happened over time? Her parents noticed a more frequent visit to the bathroom which increased the delivery of M&M bags per day. Amanda looking for pay increases had developed an ability to control her bladder and learned to cut partially downloads. That is, she didn’t download all the liquid contained therein and thereby extending the unnatural use of the toilet and therefore the number of M&M bags. Don’t you think this is a good lesson to the complexity of human being and hard to balance the interest of public policy with unintended effects of an incentive?

The same Freakonomics documentary shows otherwise applied to education. In a public school in Chicago, the Chicago University, (the home of the Chicago boys and liberalism), ran an experiment to check the reaction of problematic students and economic incentives. For each report card in which boys and girls met performance goals under imposed, would receive US$ 50, 00. The process was long and complicated and the reaction wasn’t expected. Many students with severe problems didn’t react and chose continuing being the class clown, the rebels and not allow affecting their social life instead of receiving an incentive. However, there were groups with fewer difficulties that chose the incentive option which was a matter of overcoming and changed their ratings significantly. For some, this program was a change in their life’s and achieved entering into good universities. The conclusions are again that incentives aren’t so obvious and that there are always expected and also unexpected results.

The human mind doesn’t work as a robot and motivations are difficult to understand.

Let’s examine Barcelona’s case, the most popular soccer team in Ecuador, which already has many years of poor results. Leaders have tried everything: changing coaches, special promotions, economic incentives for players and a great etc. Nothing has happened; is it a matter of more economic incentives?

That doesn’t seem to be working either. The available information indicates that the Barcelona players are among the best paid in the country; the annual Barcelona’s has been higher than LDU (Quito) a team that has won the national and foreign championships in recent years. So, not everything can be reduced and simplified in economic incentives. In the case of a team (sports or business) the key is having leadership and long term strategy. Champions aren’t created (businesswise or sports) in short term processes. There must be lots of training, motivation and accountability.

But where is the relation of the previous stories with Ecuador? The country is mired in a problem of lack of economic growth and unemployment. Despite a large public expenditure and credit facilities to underpin strong sales in areas such as building, vehicles and appliances, they don’t generate investment in new production units (factories, farms, shrimp and flower farms, etc.) that offer new quality employments. The new employment is based in public employment and some commercial growth The Government responded with a proposed code of production, a long and complex legal instrument as everything that is proposed from the long Montecristi’s Constitution. Its background and foundation starts when referring against the Washington Consensus and against the supposedly ne-liberalism as the ones causing the Ecuadorian misery. However, being positive are we able to welcome this initiative as a first attempt to get closer to the productive sector? It has been a sector that has received insults from the Government during the past three years. Can we see this as a new desire to build bridges, to build consensus and work hand in hand for a better Ecuador? Since we are positive we should look it this way, but to build confidence after so many insults and abuse is complicated and the proposed economic incentives are confusing. The consequences might be good but at the end we could see unexpected results such as Amanda’s. Much simpler and with better results, would be working on a proposal of simple incentives to correct past mistakes, such as the creation of the minimum tax (not as income but of existing as a company), but more important is showing that there is no longer an interest to seeing businesses as an enemy of the revolution; that President Chavez’s schizophrenic adventures won’t be followed and that there is the desire of governing for ALL Ecuadorians (as).

“The Environmental Management in Small and Medium Business�

Ing. Vicente Zavala Zavala Experimental Farm Director (UNESUM) Director of Entrepreneurship Program (UNESUM)

Business and environment The progressive growth in cities, the development of industrialization and modern civilization ultimately, cause on the natural environment a number of negative processes geared toward ecological deterioration and imbalance that, in failing to take timely measures may be irreversible.

Industrialization is a decisive factor that acts on the physical environment: pollutants in the atmosphere, discharges to rivers and seas, waste production, etc., involve consequences that should be considered to minimize its negative impact.

The negative impact of economic development on the environment are being taken into account for many years; however, it wasn’t until the decade of the eighties, when our societies and their governments, have begun responding with the incorporation of measures aimed at a balanced understanding between the environment and the processes arising from human performance, integrating the environmental factor within the Business Management System, considering it as a critical aspect and genuine competitive advantage over their peers.

The identification of the environmental aspects and the evaluation of the effects associated to a business or industrial activity is essential to know the environmental impact these activities, products and services generate and establish environmental objectives and targets.

The Environmental Aspects are the elements or characteristics of an activity, product and service, capable of interacting with the environment. On the other hand, the Environmental Impact is the transformation or change that occurs in the environment because of an environmental aspect.

Environmental Aspects

Environmental Impacts

Waste

Soil pollution

Waste water

Water pollution

Air Emissions

Air pollution

Noise

Noise pollution

Energy Consumption

Odor generation

Water Consumption resources

Nonrenewable Consumption

1.1 The attitude towards the environment Industry must to adapt constantly faced with changing consumer demand, technology and legislation. In this sense the environment is the last change.

The Business Perceptions in respect to the environment can be observed under different perspectives: 1. Business Opportunities.

2. Indifference 3. Element Integrated into Management The interest for environmental themes has reached all levels of society and the worries about environmental problems aren’t restricted to consumers. The attitudes towards environmental management can be classified into three categories.

Altruist: Protects the environment because he’s convinced.

Positive with Plans: Makes positive planning to protect the environment as a matter of good business management.

Positive without Plans: Recognizes the need of doing something but hasn’t got plans.

Apathetic: Doesn’t capture the importance of environmental topics, the need to apply rules or the advantages of an active approach.

Negative: Focuses on the costs and environmental restrictions. Believes that cannot be profitably integrated into the company strategy.

Hostile: Considers that the environment is a fad or a fraud.

Advantages and opportunities for SME are in the implementation of an environmental system.

The potential benefits following the introduction of environmental progress can be direct or indirect.

Among the direct benefits included the reduction of treatment costs by reducing waste and effluents, energy consumption, water use and raw materials, etc. On

the other hand, costs are avoided because the insurance cost reduces, protects property maintaining its values and preventing accidents, fees are reduced as well as the cleanup operations, by minimizing the risks for penalties. Besides all the above, it improves competitiveness, because the environmental image is appreciated by providers and customers, thus avoiding trade barriers while it becomes an element of innovation.

Among the indirect benefits we can highlight the motivation of the workforce, since the implementation of environmental management of SME’s can be integrated as a stimulus for work habits as an element of cohesion.

Another indirect benefit is the improvement of the relationship with the community and proves the company will invest in the future. At the same time facilitates relationships to enrich the public image and good product placement becomes growing awareness of the company’s market.

Profitable Environmental costs.

The SME’s environmental management is going to be seen as another phase of the manufacturing process although in many cases is still common practice to confining environment in a department whose main objectives is complying with the legislation including the environmental costs of “other indirect items”. To all the above we must add that in many cases the companies don’t know exactly how much their environmental costs are, which makes difficult any environmental action.

The legislation that becomes each time more strict and the progressive demand about annual accountability over environmental contingencies, besides of the society’s increasing concern about environmental topics, has placed businesses in a situation in which they need more quality information when making decisions.

So now, little by little, the companies are being aware that the environmental problems and the solutions are very important, both for themselves as for the society and can therefore have a crucial effect of profitability at long term; it’s also been admitted that it is necessary to analyze and plan, noticing that it’s time to design and implement an environmental strategy.

For all these reasons, some companies are finding that the identification, accumulation and quantification or the origin of environmental costs is essential to reducing the impact on total costs and increase the company’s results. Then, how an SME can act to improve environmentally and environmentalists also recoup their costs? In first place, the company must realize that the performance is included in business performance.

At the time of quantifying the application costs of new environmental regulations, companies must be clear that the best way to reduce environmental costs is to stop producing waste; it’s cheaper to make improvements in processes to reduce the waste generated, than investing money in treating them, as the costs affect the product’s price. Therefore, establishing a waste management program would be interesting.

On the other hand, to evaluate the environmental burdens associated to a product, process or activity, a “life cycle analysis� is made for determining effectively the impact of resource use and waste production, outfalls occurring in the environment. In this way it can be decided what strategies for environmental improvement could be applied.

A PROSPECTIVE ANALYSIS OF URUGUAY’S ECONOMY Econ. Eduardo Piaggio Puig The Uruguayan economy, six months after having a second government from the left wing, is dramatically increasing, expected to close 2010 with a GDP expansion of 6.5%, finding the unemployment rate, in a frictional level, varying according to the period between 6% and 7%.

Uruguay has got everything to obtain a sustained growth at medium and long term to become being the Switzerland of America, as it was in mid-twentieth century.

First, it has an institutional system of high quality, which guarantees respect to private property, the fulfillment of contracts and generally a high dose of security and pre-visibility. The Uruguayan political system has matured a lot, after the instauration of democracy in 1985; a proof of the mentioned is that three political parties have alternated in power without much fanfare or trauma.

In second place, Uruguay doesn’t suffer the vicissitudes of nature (such as earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes and landslides), which linked to their incredible natural beauties and a good infrastructure, offers a unique attraction for tourists and investment.

Thirdly, the former America’s Switzerland has an educated and informed urban population with everything to take opportunity for their future.

These three factors of structural type, coupled with unusually favorable economic factors, such as the economic expansion of the main commercial partners (Brazil and China), the high prize of exportation products and historically low interest rates at international level, makes Uruguay capable to visualize its future with moderate optimism.

However, the path towards economic development is fraught with challenges and threats.

On one hand, Uruguay has structural problems which have to be solved urgently: an aged population, an outdated educational system and has lost the quality it once had; a gradual but constant social disintegration, the emigration of qualified manpower (among others, engineers, doctors, mathematicians and computer specialists), insecurity in the streets, especially in the capital, and disintegration of the family, traditional pillar of Uruguayan society.

To all the structural factors that threat Uruguay’s capacity to develop, we must add factors concerned to its situation, adding a new warning over the future: the economic vulnerability of Uruguay.

This is due to the high public debt, high inflation in dollars that has undermined the profitability of export companies, a slight but persistent fiscal deficit despite the record of growth and fund-taxes, a still high degree of dollarization of the economy; inflation rate is still higher to acceptable levels for both the BCU as well as for the population that suffers shortages every day.

A separate chapter, and certainly the biggest problem in the management of economic policy, is the notorious temporary inconsistency between fiscal policy, notably expansive since the left came to power in elections in October 2004, and a contractile monetary policy. This undoubtedly has conspired against a better performance of the economy.

In summary, Uruguay has everything to become a very prosperous country in the coming years; for it will have to work hard, implementing quality economic policies that lead down a path of sustained growth, low inflation and unemployment and a fair distribution of national wealth. The path is difficult, but as happened recently in the World Cup where Uruguay managed to place among the top four, that depends on one’s own country and the intelligence and courage of its people.

THE UTPL-ECTS ACADEMIC CREDIT SYSTEM FOR HIGHER EDUCATION IN ECUADOR; AN ONGOING MODEL Elsa Cárdenas Sempertegui and Lupe Luzuriaga Peña UTPL’s Research Teachers Technical University of Loja has shown a continuing concern for improving the quality of their student’s formation and respond to current demands; even more, when in the World Declaration of Higher Education UNESCO (1998) there was expressed the need “to promote lifelong learning and the construction of the right skills to contribute to society’s cultural, social and economic development”.

From the academic period October 2007 – February 2008, the On Site Educational Methodology of our University, put into effect UTPL- ECTC Academic Credit System. With this experience, the implementation of this new model in the Mode of Open and Distance Studies was analyzed, as an institutional challenge.

Added to the above was the decision of the National Council of Higher Education CONESUP through the Coded Regulation of Academic Regime of the National System of Higher Education dated January 22, 2009, which states that the Universities of the country, reconcile their domestic legislation with the contents of the new regulation, which necessarily include academic credit as the unit of measurement of student work.

The UTPL Credit System –ETCS based on the European Credit Transfer System and Credit Accumulation enables us to locate ourselves in a globalized scenario, ensuring that interdisciplinary education, facilitate students’ mobility, physic or virtual, and academic recognition, identifying a standard language at the time of validating studies in different universities.

The educational approach of UTPL-ECTS model is a system that focuses on the student and what he learns, it seeks to inspire lifelong study, learning from the skills, with the support of a teaching and tutoring team, materials, teaching resources and new technologies.

UTPL-ECTS Educational Model Approach Education focused in teaching

Education focused in learning

Terminal Learning

Learning throughout life

Learning content

Learning skills

Final and only evaluation

Diverse & continuous evaluation Self-evaluation Hetero-evaluation Co-evaluation

Transmitter Professor

Mediator Professor

As for academic credit as students unit work measure, involves 32 hours of students work (29 hours of independent work and 3 hours of interaction).

Academic credits which long distance students will accumulate in the course of their career, involves: self-study, research tasks, interaction in the Virtual Learning Environment, participation in tutorials, video conferences and other academic events (workshops, seminars, courses, conferences, endorsed by the UTPL). There are also academic practices, internships and professional links with the community, evaluation activities as well as the fulfillment of the titling work.

What is a UTPL/ECTS CREDIT? 32 hours 29H + 3 H A credit is the unit of measure Of a student’s workload

Personal Study

Autonomous and Independent work

Practicum: internships Work activities

Research Work

Seminars, courses Conferences endorsed By the University

Tutoring EVA Interaction Video conferences Learning Evaluation: *Self Evaluation *Hetero evaluation: At long distance and At present *Co-evaluation

The UTPL-ECTS model defines the competition as a set of attitudes, skills and knowledge that the students acquire and features according to their personal characteristics and work experience with a criterion for integrity and are expressed in the work performance. The powers aren’t formed in one or more subjects, but are the end product of curricular integration.

Authority Attitudes

Skills

Knowledge

Know-how

COMPREHENSIVE TRAINING TO BE The model adopted by the UTPL provides two types of competences: Generic and specific.

Generic competency: are those capacities (attitudes, skills and knowledge) common to all jobs open in the UTPL. They are a fundamental part of the profile that the student must develop during their training.

Specific competency: are characteristics of specific qualifications for the profession, giving consistency to the social and vocational training profile.

The training program for the development of the skills set includes five areas or blocks of subjects: Basic training (10%); Career Generics (15%); Core Subject (35%); Complementary (10%); Free Choice (10%), and in addition the Practicum that includes professional internships and links with the community (20%).

TRAINING PROGRAM 20% Practicum Professional internships and links With the community

Degree Works

35% CORE CAREER

15% CAREER GENERICS 10%

Basic Training 





  

Free Choice

Complementary

Basic Training. (10%) is the one which the UTPL considers essential for every professional, and are subjects that should be adopted by Universities’ students of different careers.

Study Methodology, National and Environmental Reality, Oral and Written Expression, Anthropology, Ethics, Computing and Thematic Research seminars, and Spiritual Formation.

Career Generics: (15%) are common to all the whole area of vocational training to which a career belongs (Administrative areas, Biological, Social Humanistic and Technical). These subjects are the basis for a student formation in the professional area and help obtaining the generic competencies.

Core Career. (35%) are subjects that provide specific training and related to the career itself; enhance the achievement of specific competences for the training of future professionals.

Complementary: (10%) subjects that contribute to the formation of career competences. They will complement and enrich the professional profile.

Free Choice: (10%) subjects and activities the students select from a range of options offered by the University, guided by their interests and personal motivations.

Practicum: Professional internships and links with the community (20%) complete the career’s professional training, allowing the student a space to interact with the work camp in the field of their future profession.

The introduction of the practicum is innovative in the training program, which has been focused on bringing our students the knowledge of the work reality in the field of vocational training; therefore, it will support the comprehensive training through practical activities, the teamwork development, stimulating their critical spirit and the ability to make decisions. In addition, the planning of the practicum in the academic model is to recognize and validate with a wellregulated process, the skills acquired by the students in work environments related to the field of vocational training in which you put to the test, knowledge, practical application, values and attitudes.

In the academic period October- February 2010 the Open and Distance Modality of the New Academic UTPL – ECTS System is put into effect with students entering first cycle. It’s a continuous feedback process to enhance and strengthen the positive aspects and correct what is necessary.