Posted on 07/30/2008 12:18:55 PM PDT by OKIEDOC
CALEXICO — In the past four months this border city’s officials have traveled into Mexicali about 60 times, attended meetings with their industrial commissions and chambers of commerce and met with potential Chinese, German, Spanish and Indian investors.
The activity is all in the pursuit of economically stimulating the city that shares a border with a Mexican metropolis.
Since making economic development its priority last year, amid a budget deficit, a screeching slowdown in the housing market (once a major revenue maker for the city because of processing fees) and the increasing need for city amenities such as parks, Calexico has made luring in the residue commerce from its neighbor — a huge manufacturing base and home to hundreds of foreign companies — a priority.
“Promoting foreign investment is the most promising part of our development plan,” said Francisco Gutierrez, Calexico’s business development coordinator.
Mexicali’s manufacturing sector by far is its largest, providing an average of 73,000 jobs in 2006, according to the Mexican social statistics agency, IMSS.
Its three largest employers are the U.S. companies Black & Decker and Cardinal Health, and Sony from Japan. U.S. aerospace giant Goodrich Corp. broke ground on a 350,000-square-foot facility last year here joining Honeywell.
Now, Calexico is trying to position itself to “catch” some of that business by using in conjunction with others, the “twin plant” model of establishing a manufacturing base in Mexico and a distribution or other logistical bases across the border to access the much-desired U.S. consumer, Gutierrez said. That model already exists with two companies in the Calexico area.
“I think what I need to do is talk to their corporate office to try and catch some that here,” Gutierrez said, a former Wells Fargo executive. Gutierrez has business contacts in the manufacturing sector derived from his time at CETYS University in Mexicali, he said.
“The first thing to do is working with the key players in the state of Baja,” he said. Already Gutierrez has been tracking four potential firms, which he declined to name. Tuesday he was meeting with representatives from an unnamed Mexicali food-processing company.
The process, however, is incremental. Establishing a foundation that companies could rely on is only the first layer. And the sooner the city can establish the communication process the better, Gutierrez said.
“We are competing with New Mexico, Texas for the same investors,” he said.
Toyotas for America, Black and Decker Tools, Honneywell, Sony and the list goes on.
Inside Mexicali's city limits some 73,000 jobs that used to be in AMERICA.
Exactly why I won’t buy B&D tools. The good stuff- Dewalt- is made in Mexico and the consumer grade junk is made in China. They’re now moving manufacturing of Porter-Cable tools down there also.
What do you mean OUR jobs? Is there something in the constitution that states that these jobs “belong” to “the Amurcan werkin’ man”?
I feel for this poor writer as he has received some outlandish comments from Obama supporters.
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