Success made in Bolivia.

Meanwhile, business goes on, and so Franklin Mining, a US mining group, signed a memorandum of understanding with YPBF, Bolivia's oil & gas state company, just weeks after the nationalisation. It plans to set up a joint venture to construct and operate a 10,000-barrels per day gas-to-liquids processing plant that should help Bolivia industrialise its gas and reduce the need for imported diesel fuels. The plant capacity might be expanded later. Every government official will tell you that they want to be friends with all countries of the world and maintain good relations with the USA. This government will want to progress on the free trade treaty with America and in general Bolivia still wants investment and there is a favourable climate for it. The USA is Bolivia's largest financial aid partner, and this makes Bolivia want to diversity its trade and investment (commercial) dependence away from the USA. But is it possible to have a profit and change society in this new climate in Bolivia today? Yes and that's exactly what BancoSol, Bolivia's leading bank in microfinance business, has managed to do. The bank started in 1986 as an NGO, and in 1992 it became a commercial bank. It was the first commercial bank in the world to become a regulated institution dedicated exclusively to micro-finance. BancoSol CEO's Kurt Koenigsfest explained that the bank today offers working capital loans as well as housing loans for micro-entrepreneurs. "Since 1992, we have given loans to more than 1.5 million entrepreneurs in Bolivia. Our portfolio today is at $140 million, which is not much if you consider the volume itself, but if you take the average of $800 per loan, then it is a lot", he adds. Koenigsfest has recently been elected as a global leader to represent Bolivia for the next five years at the Davos World Economic Forum. In his opinion, Bolivia is an attractive investment destination full of opportunities: "we have industries, and natural resources, but we don't have the ways, both human and financial, to make those industries grow. We need money from outside, we need partners, and we also need clear rules and understand that any association will be in the form of a partnership". BancoSol's chief believes that Bolivia lost in the last capitalization process, when "we were taking 20-30% and the investors took the biggest chunk of 70-80%". Another success story is that of Soboce (Sociedad Boliviana de Cemento SA), the largest cement producer in the country, ISO certified and joint venture partner with companies from Chile and Mexico. Its new president, Juan Carlos Requena, is a strong advocate of better relations between his country and the US; just as importantly, he is committed enhancing the corporate social responsibility of his business. Soboce has more than 80 years of history behind it, but it was only recently that the company board agreed to direct ten percent of their profits to economically depressed areas within the reach of the company's activities. As most of his business colleagues, Requena is concerned about the lack of clear rules for businesses to operate within the country, and expects the current government to solve this long-term problem. For many years, the Bolivian economy did not have clear rules set out for the long term, he says, and now that the country is enjoying a good economic momentum because of the high prices of natural resources and commodities, it is a good time to set the rule of the games clearly for the long term.