Manuel Laboy Rivera, an engineer who has a background in luring stateside companies to set up shop in Puerto Rico, was tapped to oversee the Puerto Rico Department of Economic Development and Commerce.
Laboy Rivera worked as deputy secretary of the department in the administration of Gov. Luis Fortuño, who was governor from 2009 to the start of 2013. Governor-Elect Ricardo Rossell- nominated Laboy Rivera on Monday to be the secretary of the department.
Laboy Rivera was very sharp and organized in his role in the Fortuño administration, said Gustavo Vélez, chairman of Puerto Rico based Inteligencia Econ-mica. Vélez worked with Laboy Rivera at the time. The latter was working on strategic matters for the department.
"He will do a great job," Vélez said.
Laboy Rivera holds a master of business administration degree and is a licensed professional engineer.
In his role, Laboy Rivera will seek to get companies located in the 50 states or outside the U.S.A. to set up operations in Puerto Rico, Vélez said. He will try to promote Puerto Rico's advantages in service industries. Rossell- wants to get skills-intensive industries to locate in Puerto Rico.
Laboy Rivera will probably seek to get a federal tax incentive for investment in Puerto Rico. Vélez said this was probably an unwise quest and anyway was unlikely to succeed.
In recent years Laboy Rivera has been working as a senior project manager at Abarca Health, LLC, a pharmacy benefits management company in Puerto Rico. According to Vélez he also worked with a state-side entrepreneur to bring a business to Puerto Rico.
In October 2015 he presented a proposal for improving the manufacturing industry to a college seminar in San Juan. He noted that while the size of Puerto Rico's manufacturing economy increased both objectively and relative to the size of the whole economy from 2008 to 2014, the number of employees in it went down both absolutely and relatively. In 2014 the sector was 48% of the island's economy by product value but only 9% of the island's employment.
He said "a paradigm shift is imperative." There must be "a vision of the future where our core skills can create new competitive advantages based on entrepreneurship, production, export, and innovation."
Puerto Rico must move from a situation where manufacturing was primarily attracted by tax incentives to one where these incentives are just one of several factors, he said. It must move from one where the manufacturing sector is dominated by foreign owned companies to one where both foreign and island-owned operations are important.
In 2015 Laboy Rivera also presented a seminar on ocean thermal energy conversion for Puerto Rico.
According to the El Vocero news web site, at Monday's presentation Laboy Rivera said in his new role he would work for the government to regain trust, to reduce the costs for businesses to operate in Puerto Rico, and to rebuild the island's infrastructure with the help of the private sector and nonprofits.
Throughout the administration of Gov. Alejandro García Padilla, Alberto Bac- has been the secretary of the Department of Economic Development and Commerce.
Puerto Rico's Senate will have to confirm Laboy Rivera's appointment.
On Monday Rossell- also named María Palou as an advisor on development and infrastructure. On Tuesday he nominated Fernando Gil to be secretary of the Department of Housing, Glorimar Andújar Matos as secretary of the Department of the Family, and Andrés Volmar Méndez as secretary of the Department of Recreation and Sports.
