Word: fomento
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Fomento. At that point Puerto Rico, its hungry people jamming an eroded land without oil, coal or iron, looked hopeless. Undeterred. Muñoz counted the island's assets: plentiful labor, an open door through U.S. tariff walls for anything the island could grow or make, a ready-to-hand brain trust of half a dozen bright young U.S.-educated economists, professors and businessmen. Among them: Rafael Pico, now president of the government's bank, and Roberto Sánchez Vilella, now Secretary of State (Vice-Governor). Rex Tugwell. named Governor, implanted an efficient civil service...
...factories going, Muñoz tapped a young pharmacist (University of Michigan '32) named Teodoro Moscoso Jr., who left a job running his family's wholesale drug business in Ponce to form and boss Fomento. The program's principle, as summed up by Moscoso: "Economic development is not an end but a means of attacking poverty." It avoided political doctrines; Muñoz early ruled that Fomento should "have no fixed taboos, no sacred cows in the choice of instruments to achieve a better standard of living...
...limiting corporate sugar holdings to 500 acres, broke up the big mainland-owned companies, formed collective-like "proportional profit" cane plantations. A TVA-style Water Resources Authority took over power production from several private power companies, and began wide-scale irrigation as well. Using $10.7 million in treasury funds, Fomento built or took over factories to make cement, glass and cardboard (for rum bottles and cases), shoes, tile...
...uninformed investor with every kind of assistance. U.S. Federal income taxes do not apply in Puerto Rico, and any new business not provably running away from U.S. taxes or unions was freed from the island income tax for ten years. Profits could and did run to 60% of sales; Fomento Chief Moscoso says: "We found this not too high a price to pay for our accelerated rate of development...
...Fomento even hired expert U.S. economists to sit down with prospects, show them how high returns might run. It offered them ready-built plants at low rent, loans from the Fomento bank, cheap power from the efficient Water Resources Board, accurate statistics. Nor did Fomento wait for investors to come. Ted Moscoso can often be seen in Fomento's plush offices in the new Tishman Building on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue, striding down a corridor on his way for some "belly-to-belly selling" of a businessman interested in setting up a manufacturing plant in Puerto Rico...