Business View Caribbean - April 2016 35
terms of dealing with new laws and regulations.”
While the government of Puerto Rico has been ham-
strung, recently, by a severe budget deficit, Garcia says
that the manufacturing sector has remained relatively
unscathed. “Manufacturing and services, to a great ex-
tent, have not been affected directly from the govern-
ment’s budget shortfall, except for those entities that
directly provide some services to government agencies.
But, to a great degree, we are not directly correlated with
the structure of the government; we basically are in the
business environment and the cycle of business in Puer-
to Rico has been pretty much separated from that. We
are being affected a little bit by the reduction in popula-
tion that Puerto Rico has sustained over the last five or
six years, in terms of less population growth and people
moving to the mainland. That has affected some mem-
bers in the service sector.”
