Cuando hace poco más de dos semanas se publicó una versión de la charla que el excoordinador de Revitalización de la Junta de Control Fiscal (JCF), Noel Zamot , ofreció a inversionistas señalando patrones cuestionables de conducta en el gobierno, la reacción del mismo gobierno fue atacarlo por supuestamente hablar sin prueba.

A Zamot se le llamó charlatán porque la versión publicada decía que lanzó sus dardos sin mencionar nombres de proyectos ni de funcionarios involucrados en los procesos cuestionables que, según el, habían empujado a que miles de millones de inversión potencial se alejaran de la Isla. Se le retó tambien a que produjera la evidencia.

Sin embargo, NotiCel localizó una grabación del evento en la que claramente Zamot puntualiza que, aunque los ejemplos que estaba ofreciendo habían sido anonimizados, 'les puedo dar los documentos si quieren, no me estoy inventando nada de esto'. De hecho, en su comparecencia congresional ayer como parte de una vista para discutir los problemas del sistema energetico en Puerto Rico, el exfuncionario dijo que ha llevado sus quejas a las autoridades pertinentes.

El evento ocurrió el 28 de febrero organizado por la empresa Consultiva Internacional, que maneja la consultora Myrna Rivera y cuya convocatoria no es para el público en general sino para la comunidad financiera de la Isla. La reseña original del evento la hizo el periódico El Nuevo Día, tambien basándose en una grabación y en las notas de una reportera, pero ni en la reseña original ni en la controversia considerable que se desarrolló despues, el periódico publicó la grabación ni aludió a la cita de Zamot sobre la evidencia que tiene de las situaciones que describía.

NotiCel reproduce a continuación la transcripción de la grabación con la misma mezcla de ingles y español con la que Zamot se condujo, con ediciones mínimas y con indicadores en donde la falta de claridad del audio no permitía descifrar lo dicho.

Algunos pasajes que resaltan son:

'[P]rocesos repetibles y transparencia' es lo que hace falta para que sea exitoso el despliegue de capital de reconstrucción.

Se necesita el 'modelo de los estados', en el que la intervención gubernamental es mínima y no hay un interes de la administración de controlar que hace el capital privado.

El 'punto de inflección' para Puerto Rico lo pueden provocar los inversionistas privados que, aparte de los problemas con el gobierno, quieran 'mover la aguja' del desarrollo de la Isla con su dinero.

Fármacos, medicina y tecnología son los tres sectores que hay que mantener y crecer en Puerto Rico.

Aguadilla es hoy lo más cercano que hay en Puerto Rico a la visión del desarrollo que la Isla podría alcanzar.

El derrotero de Puerto Rico 'va a cambiar cuando el pueblo puertorriqueño cuando esten en las urnas, diga yo voy a ejercer mi derecho al voto no por un color, sino por alguien que gobierne de la manera en que nosotros nos lo merecemos'.

'[T]ransparencia gubernamnetal, seguridad y educación', son cosas a atender de inmediato en Puerto Rico.

'Tengo que decir esto, suena como que estoy molesto, no estoy molesto con alguna entidad particular del gobierno, alguna persona particular, estoy frustrado que la estructura actual de nuestro gobierno ha llegado a donde estamos hoy'.

Vea tambien: Zamot pide Coordinador Federal de Recuperación para PR

TRANSCRIPCIÓN

I'm Noel Zamot. I'm actual size just to let you know that. I'm Puerto Rican, therefore I cannot speak when I'm sitting down nor without moving my arms. So I'm not going to go on the podium and instead we're going to do this nice and quick if I can find the clicker and not hurt myself. I want to make this super fast. I want to tell you about the job that I will have for the next two weeks and then I'll do something else.

First off thanks for sticking around. And thank you for what you may not know you were doing for many good people un Puerto Rico. By the way, English? Spanish? What's best? English? We got a show of hands. Ok, we'll go English and I'll make the jokes in Spanish if I remember them. So, here we go, a little bit about myself.

Myrna was way, way, way too generous. I'm not an astronaut. I was born here in Río Piedras, I went to Cupeyville and then studied engineering. I studied engineering and I was on the subway when I realized I wanted to serve my country. I said 'Hey can I, I'd like to do something with airplanes'. They said yes, your eyes aren't that bad, you can fly. I think my next question was 'Can I wear a helmet?'. They said yes.

And next thing I know after college and grad school I'm heading to flight school and far too soon after that I was in combat over Irak in the first Gulf War which is interesting. [**] me more and I'll tell you stories. And then I had a 25 year career in the military, retired as a Colonel, had the best job ever as a Commander of the Air Force Test Pilot School. As the first Hispanic to hold that job. I had the job that Chuck Yeager had [**] Chuck Yeager the guy who broke the sound barrier, he would actually come into the office and annoy us [**]

Went into industry, started a business and fate [**] Winston Churchill had a quote, 'Wouldn't it be terrible if fate tapped you on the shoulder and found you unprepared?'. I was asked to be part of the economic recovery of Puerto Rico through the Oversight Board. There are three positions in the Oversight Board that are named. I'm not part of the Board, I'm an employee. There are seven people that everybody knows, and we all know the issues that are going on. There's three positions that are named by statute, the Executive Director, the Legal Counsel and me. The writers of the law wanted economic development and that's why I'm here. So, I'm going to talk a little bit about what it is that I did. The process that I managed. I'm going to go through that very quickly because I want to tell you why the process didn't work. And what the lessons are for you as investors in Puerto Rico and why notwithstanding everything out there, there's a bright future.

I will say people, everybody, was clapping when the 8.4, 8.2 billion, I used to have a saying 'things are never as good or as bad as they initially seem.' And I would caution everybody to price, to discount, the future accordingly. Does that mean that the plan for disbursing those 8.2, 8.3 is approved? There are many more steps to be taken before that money actually makes it to the streets of Puerto Rico, I hope everybody knows that. What is going to make that deployment of capital successful? Frankly is repeatable processes and transparency. I think many, many people in Puerto Rico are working towards that. To the extent that that can be communicated to the federal entities, to that extent Puerto Rico will be successful in attracting those funds. So that's my apolitical, it's not even paid, and it's not political, it's a sanity check based on people I talk to.

So people go, 'oh I can't, I'm not supposed to do that'. People say 'what do you do as Revitalization Coordinator?' My friends think I basically just hand out money like a drunken sailor. My mom probably thinks that I'm solving some world problem with some fantastic people and that I meet with the UN every day and have lunch with the pope. What I think I do, actually, is try to take investors to a better way to get money into Puerto Rico and help this gaggle of folks that want to invest, developers, investors, catalysts, change agents, venture capitalists. And sort of focusing on areas that Puerto Rico really needs. I think society and definitely NotiCel, El Nuevo Día think I just kind of do snow angels in wads of cash with my friends then, I don't know, get drunk. What I really do is I push this rock up every day and then the rock comes down and flattens me and then I do that again. So, that's only funny because it's true. So, this is, this is probably the most annoying device I have ever held in my life, other than a phone.

So that's the CPP I'm not going to talk about, the Critical Projects Process. My job was essentially to bring in private capital and focus it on infrastructure and do an expedited permitting program because that had been an issue in the past, right? And we could talk about it, anybody can submit a project. That's not important, I'll tell you what is. Look at that. That's what we wanted to invest. And it sounds like a laundry list of things that are broken in Puerto Rico. Availability of funds, hey, if you're well capitalized, anyone here is well-capitalized? I hope you are. Those were all acceptable. The reality is that this was a fast permitting program in an environment where Puerto Rico had zero access to capital markets, we're probably not going to have access to capital markets for many years and we wanted to basically act like other states and say 'hey, if the capital is interested, it meets the criteria, let's just do it.' And that's the process, basically, somebody came in, we coordinated. People say 'oh, you know, you're imposing stuff on'. No, we coordinated with so many other people, but we did it all very transparently, and that was probably the cause of our demise. This was all online. It was done with Junta de Planificación, OGP, OGPE, the Governor's Office, the Energy Commission, so I mean everybody got it but nobody could lie because it was like, when you saw it, when you answered it, when you read it, it was a very good process. Is this really like, I'm being an entrepreneur. This is like running a startup. We have to create this from nothing and, basically, go from zero to hero in less than a year after María. So it was crazy. Afterwards, I made a recommendation, oops, let's go back, I made a recommendation, a critical projects report. We actually made a ton of mistakes on this [***] she wanted to get public comments early. We did that. The press berated us, which is great 'cause then we went, 'great, we learned, let's figure something else' and people were like 'you made a mistake and we read it on the press, aren't you going to like blow yourself up in Puente Dos Hermanos?' and I go, 'no, I'm an entrepreneur, we made a mistake, we learn' and that annoyed the hell out of people, it was interesting. Public comments came in and up we went, and the Board actually decides, I don't decide, I just recommend. And that was it.

The private investors loved it and capital providers because they saw it as an additional level of due diligence on projects so they were actually willing to bring down their costs on debt, cost of financing. And it was a high tech process. One of the things that people liked was that whenever they called, we answered the phone and we actually talk to them and we moved the ball forward. And I was talking to a guy one time and, I remember, he was actually in another conference that I just came from, and I said, 'hey man, I apologize, we've been out about five phone calls in the last two weeks', and he said, 'no, no this is great because every time I call you we actually get closer to the goal and you guys always answer the phone and you guys always answer my email.' Customer service, imagine that!

So, as of May 2018, and this actually got a little bit bigger. My soon to be former assistant just did all the numbers and it's essentially 9 billion, but 8.4 billion is pretty good. So, we actually attracted 8.4 billion in private capital. Ocho punto cuatro mil millones de dólares, right? So that's pretty good. At the time, when this snapshot was taken, we had about three billion in initial due diligence, about two and a half billion did not meet the criteria, so that could grow. About four point two billion we were doing the in-depth permitting, in-depth coordination with the government of Puerto Rico and all that, about one and a half was actually the reporting, we were building this thing to move it out and give it to the board but we have just only published $25 million and that's frankly all we had done. But, let's be frank, coordinating with a government that is in the middle of a massive crisis, is bankrupt, you know, everybody is investigating them, it's a very challenging thing. And this went way, way slower that anyone's ever imagined. And this wasn't still moving at the speed of light.

And then, a funny thing happened on the way to the theater. First off, a couple of things that we learned. We were actually using a model from the States. So, I've lived in Boston for a while and if somebody wants to build something, they go to the Mayor and they said. 'Hey Mr. Mayor, who owns this piece of land?' And then, whoever, the county tax assessor says, 'Oh, that land is loaned for industrial and they say great, I want to build a, I don't know, a little pharma plant there, or a drone manufacturing facility. Oh great, and where's your plan? Here we have, oh, awesome, that's really cool, what do you need from us. Well, what do you need from us? Well, I'm going to need permits. Well, is that office over there, and what else are you going to need? Well, I'm going to need capital. Well, we don't have any capital but we can give you a little tax break. Oh, great. And the person goes, I've got some money and, next thing you know, we got shovels.

In Puerto Rico, people are going what is our gain? [**] We went to the JP and they said… yeah… and not… you had to get mother [**] for anything and the Government came out and said 'you're deploying private capital and we're not controlling it.' I go, 'yes, yes, that's right'. 'Yeah, that's not good.' I lost you on the I'm the private capital and you, the government, is not controlling it. This is not Soviet Russia, right? But that's really what happened, and there's was a big full court press and the Board basically said, 'hey, listen, we cannot afford to go to battle with the government of Puerto Rico on economic development in addition to all the other stuff.' I respect that decision. They said, 'listen, why don't you just consider projects that the government of Puerto Rico hands you?' Only the ones that they say, not the ones that the submitters do.' So if the government of Puerto Rico has approved a project, then, if they want, they can submit it to critical project process and then they can get expedited permitting and all that. Hey, not the intent of the law, and, by the way, to their credit, the intent of the law was, you read Title V of PROMESA and it is very clear that whoever drafted it was five beers into a two beer weekend and it was 6 o'clock on a Friday and they just hated life and they wanted to go. We were finding things like, you know, conflicts within the same sentence of the statute. Thou shall do this, but then thou shall not. That was the intent and here's what happened. So after six months after the new policy, out of that 8.4 billion, about 8.4 billion was actually removed. Remember that 8.4 billion that was going to do a lot great things for Puerto Rico? That money is now in the hands of other places. That's a bunch of islands in the Caribbean that benefited from the money because as Puerto Rico [**] somebody else did. A lot of money was pulled back. Granted, about a third of that would probably would have never gone through and another half of what remained would have probably not met the criteria. Let's just say a third of that money, that was our take, if a third of that money would have gone through that's still 3 billion dollars. That's gone… Merry Christmas.

So, what happened? Well, I'm not going to dis my folks in the government but there's a reason why Congress put a Title V in the law and when they basically said now the Government of Puerto Rico is in charge of that, we found out this is the reason that CDBG money is not coming to Puerto Rico as efficiently as possible and is that we had a lot of process and it's not always good process and when you're trying to shove 8.4 billion dollars… it's not a very effective thing… and let's be fair, there's never been a disbursement of funds this big in the history of Puerto Rico. I don't think anybody was prepared for a chunk of 8.4 billion investment on the island. Nevertheless, when we found out we needed to go to the government to get approval, they never got it.

What happened, here's some stories, these are all true, they're all anonimized. I could get fired for saying this but I'll just tell them that my effective date is the 15th of March and it won't matter. One client had 150 days and counting, for go ahead. All they needed was a 'we think this is a good idea, you can proceed', another person has had 55 coordination meetings, 55, I dare anybody here to hold their breath for fifty five seconds and that's how many meetings they had and then what happened is that they said 'well, gee' and then they found out that someone was shopping around their proposal to one of their friends. I don't know about you but next to the words 'give me all your money' issued by an unknown person behind me in a dark alley, the next scariest words I can think of it's a government official telling me 'we're forming a consortium' to take up a project. So we had a privately-led consortium, then they said 'no, we have a better idea'. Oh!, it's that like a 70 billion dollar in debt idea or…?, just to clarify that. This last one is probably the worse one and this would have cost the government of Puerto Rico essentially zero money, the Governor actually was a strong early supporter, he agreed to the idea, he's not a dumb guy and the project is actually necessary, that I believe is his quote, they submitted through the difficult processes, you all know which ones and after two maximum delays, statutory delays, they got a letter back, and I have the letter, they basically said 'well your project is not in the public interest' which was a surprise because every other person in the administration actually said it was. The guy backs out and he basically says, well, this sucks but that's alright and two weeks later he finds almost word for word his solicitation in the back pages of El Vocero in a Request for Proposal that was not issued [**]

I can give you the documents if you want, I'm not making any of this up.

So if you're an investor that probably chills your spine and you don't want to hear any of that, right? Counterparty risk at the Commonwealth level was and still remains high and is actually being a challenge to deploy that capital. So at this point, by the way, another challenge that we had… there's a lot of splitting the pie before it's even baked, who's gonna get these contracts and all of that, and I'm trying to tell these guys, you have to actually have an open procurement system… they were going 'no, no, no, this is the way we normally do' so, it was interesting, to say the least.

So, at this point, Myrna is probably looking at me and going 'why did I invite this guy to talk here to a bunch of investors? This is not what I want to hear.' But wait, it gets better, it actually gets way better, and I mean in a really, better.

So somebody in the panel mentioned that Puerto Rico is at an inflection point, and I'm one hundred and fifty percent, to the bottom of my soul, believe that it is. But it's an inflection point mostly because of people like you, who want to put capital to work. And you have a lot of stakeholders that you're responsible for but you're also probably in many cases have a level of ethics and a desire to do greater good that says 'you know, I want to actually move the needle with my money.' And when you can get the satisfaction of doing well economically and doing well for others then that's a winning formula. There's ways to do that in Puerto Rico and this is what we found out. I think that, and many of us think that private investments, private capital unto the private sector that moves the needle is really the key to Puerto Rico's future. There is no other way forward. Taking an executive agent role is something that we've seen it's gotta be key and that's the investor and developer team basically saying, telling the Governor, telling government, and there's a lot of good people in government that want to do the same, 'let me take this worry and allow us to execute it on your behalf and allow us to create, to capture a ton of value and create some growth.'

What I have found is, these are the areas that hold a ton of promise, but they also have a disproportionate impact on the economy. I just want to share those because I think it's… in my current role and in my next role, what I want to focus on is investments in Puerto Rico that move, that really create benefit for the people of Puerto Rico. And it turns out that not all of those need to be done with the government. A lot of what I've told you sounds like sour grapes or anything. I'm just telling you what really happened, and it's not an indication of any one person because there's very good people, most of them are my friends, that work in government. It's the issue of inheriting a 40-year old bureaucracy that has been bloated beyond any recognition that they must work with and they are powerless to make any changes. There are stakeholders who have all the power in the world to deploy your capital in ethical, transparent ways. So, here's my three focus areas. These last three are my view of what needs to happen in Puerto Rico and I think present tremendous amounts of opportunity. We need to keep pharma and medical and the tech sector. It represents 30 to 35 percent of GDP probably about 40 percent, actually, 50 percent of all the good paying jobs in Puerto Rico, if they leave this game and we're already seeing lack of additional growth in investments, processes and all that. We need to turn that around, and there are ways to do that. They're highly sensitive to infrastructure investments which represent Fortune 100 takers with good structured contracts and they're just a dream investment. There's a totally addressable market for that, it's proven.

Ah, is anyone from Aguadilla? So, here's my, most of my work is in the Metro Area which [**] I'm usually cranky, moody and depressed when I'm in the Metro Area, just ask Myrna, but when I come back from Aguadilla I am, I am, I mean, el coquí. I am just so happy I spent two hours driving back talking to all my buddies saying you need to invest here, great money, it's just fantastic. You go out there and there's six Fortune 500 companies all over three square miles off of each other and there's a massive airport. Lufthansa has this MRO that will just blow your socks off. Some of the best food in Puerto Rico is in Aguadilla, you know why? Because there's a bunch of kids who got out of Mayaguez that are now working their butts off in Honeywell or something and they're hungry because they're warriors and they come out and they demand the best food. So, Aguadilla is like this incredible place of just massive upside with all these incredibly worthy uptakers and I just came bacl from a conference and we had a ton of investors there and we had an hour and a half discussion of, here's where you need to invest and people were just like 'here take my wallet, where do we start?', it's amazing stuff.

And then the last one is actually very related, growing the entrepreneurial sector, we need to explode the entrepreneurial sector in Puerto Rico, not grow by 10x but grow by a 100x. I'm an entrepreneur, I was I guess [**] I come from Boston which also says [**] I took Uber for the first four months after María and that was my personal economic investigation into the island. What I saw is that your average Puerto Rican dude or dudette is actually the most resilient, innovative, success at all cost person that you have ever met. For some reason we have not channeled that into the entrepreneurial sector in Puerto Rico and we need to do it. One of the efforts that I'm working with is with Lucy Crespo, who is like a natural treasure, from the Puerto Rico Science and Technology Trust, is catalyzing the pharma sector to basically not outsource their innovation needs but actually scale, get those needs in Puerto Rico.

[**] That is a massively undervalued part of the Puerto Rican economy and I would like to just turn that around. I gave this speech in its entirety two days ago to this group of investors I was telling you about and one gentleman asked a great question, 'Noel, honestly, what is the future?' Indulge me for a second, remember I came from an aviation entrepreneurial background. Here's where I see in the future 10 years. [**] she's graduating from college in Mayaguez, a degree in engineering, receives a call from Lockheed Martin saying 'we want you to work on a drone strike fighter'. She's gonna say, 'what are you paying?' They're going to give her some number and she's gonna go 'thanks, that's really cool but ah, you know, Lufthansa and Lockheed are here and [**] they do even cooler stuff because they have like all these relocated in Aguadilla and I could basically spend the next 25, 30 years in a career going place to place, or starting my own startup here, and I don't need to do this so you guys would have to like triple that offer before I give up my beaches and my good food and being able to visit my family in Mayaguez'. And the guys are gonna go, well that sucks but we'll actually move more of our operation down there so you can work with us. And then there's gonna be another kid, who's also 10 and he's gonna be on the other side of the island and he's gonna be graduating from Interamericana and he's gonna see that some Google or whoever it is, spaceship 3 or 4 at that point actually is gonna do [***] in Roosevelt Roads because we're at what they call parallel 18 from the equator and you know what's really important about that? That is easy, really easy to set things into space, ridiculously cheap to actually send something into space and it makes perfect sense to have access to space from some lift in Puerto Rico. And that kid is gonna go 'you know, I'm gonna show up there' and [**] will have presence down there and he will be able to get a job either as a vehicle engineer or designer, by the way, at that point we will have gone to distributing manufacturing, most of this stuff for the vehicles will be designed here in the area around Ceiba and, you know, they can decide to work in the control room or manufacturing or if they really want to he's just gonna go to Isla Grande and start his path to become an astronaut because they have a full fledged aviation school. That's one sector, two kids, in 10 years from now and none of that is science fiction, all of that is possible. I think what we need to do is really focus on the prize and the way to get there is realizing that we need, somebody said we're at an inflection point, let's start behaving like a state, let's start having private capital, [**] let's give the american citizen living in Puerto Rico meaningful economic opportunities they deserve. And I don't think this is crazy. That this is why we're here. I told this to the last crowd I spoke to, but I think I can also say the same thing to you. The way, deep down, this may be why you're here. This is why Myrna is a trusted advisor. If I take a look at her she'll probably had said 'wow!, that looks like a really cool future too.' And as a proud son of the island I don't want to be getting more excuses as to why we need to be second best, there's no reason why we can't be the place where everybody really would want to come to. My god, who would not want to come to the future that I've just described. So I think, as a future economic beacon of the region, we just need to change our mind set a little bit and once we do, really the sky's the limit and I mean that pun intended. That's all I have and I'm here to ask questions you might have.

[APLAUSO]

Sí, como no.

Pregunta - [**] Usted cree que pueda cambiar.

Sí, creo que puede cambiar, pero eso va a requerir francamente no se va a cambiar por una junta de supervisión, no se va a cambiar por un coordinador de reconstruccion que saben que eso se ha discutido, eso ya no es chiste, eso es serio, OFCPR le dicen, pero eso no va a cambiar por eso. Te voy a decir lo que va a cambiar, va a cambiar cuando el pueblo puertorriqueño cuando esten en las urnas, diga 'yo voy a ejercer mi derecho al voto no por un color, sino por alguien que gobierne de la manera en que nosotros nos lo merecemos'. The first candidate that runs in an ability to govern, instead of status is gonna run away in Puerto Rico. Puede que este totalmente incorrecto pero tenemos una cultura en Puerto Rico, de la cual hemos sido víctima todos, y el que diga que no está metiendo un embuste, de que nosotros decimos 'ah, este es bueno porque es azul, o es malo porque es rojo, o es malo porque es azul y es bueno porque… y eso ya tiene que cambiar'. Tenemos que estar en un punto de vista que alguien que sea servidor público en verdad sea servidor público. Sorry if that was a litle bit too blunt, pero yo creo que ahí es donde va a cambiar. Yo creo que la sociedad civil en Puerto Rico es lo que va a hacer cambiar esto, es cuando el pueblo diga 'tú eres sevidor yo no soy tu servidor', vamos a dejarnos del caciquismo y no estoy apuntando a nadie del gobierno en específico, pero es una cosa interesante. Yo estaba hablando con un CEO del sector de manufactura y el tipo me dice 'una de las cosas que me di cuenta en mi carrera estudiantil es que cuando yo estaba estudiando en Estados Unidos un oficial electo era servidor público, yo llego aquí y son farándula'. Sorry if that was a little…

Pregunta - [**] inversión privada en proyectos privados como la salvación del país y de un pueblo que elija a un gobierno por razones inteligentes, se nos va de la mano el proyecto que provoca, que produce la inteligencia, que es la Universidad de Puerto Rico, ¿cuál es el compromiso que tienen ustedes con la universidad del estado?

Yo no puedo hablar del compromiso que tiene la Junta. Yo se que eso está en un proceso de plan fiscal, yo francamente me retire del proceso del plan fiscal y del proceso de negociación de la deuda porque era necesario para yo ejercer mis labores como alguien que estaba en desarrollo económico, yo creo que eticamente no era lo correcto de estar bregando con ambos lados. No puedo dar opinión en específico de cómo se considera la, las consideraciones que tenga la Junta, puedo hablar personalmente, para mí, si yo tuviera que arreglar cuatro cosas inmediatamente con una varita mágica en Puerto Rico pues sería transparencia gubernamnetal, seguridad y educación y, depende de cuán malo este la primera plana del Vocero, uno de esos puede mayor que lo otro o no. Como todos sabemos, las cosas aquí en Puerto Rico están bastante brutal, pero esas serían las primeras tres cosas que yo personalmente haría y con eso se arreglaría muchisímo. Ahora, ¿cómo se hace específicamente? Pues, no se. Yo vengo de un mundo donde yo tengo títulos de universidades privadas y de universidades públicas, pero ambas tienen un nivel de disciplina fiscal bastante grande y a traves de años han tenido que luchar para mantenerse a flote fiscalmente, yo creo que se puede hacer.

Pregunta - [**] You say that the private sector can do these projects and they don't really need the government as a partner and if that is correct, does that mean that these projects can, with the certification of PROMESA bypass the government permitting process? Which I understand is like, can stop a project completely.

To be clear, my view, my strategic view, is that the role of government should be a catalyst, protect the citizenry, and be a catalyst for growth, not employ the citizenry and become a barrier to growth, which is not what any government starts up wanting, but sometimes ends up being de facto what happens when things don't happen correctly. That's my personal opinion, specifically the question you ask about the permitting process, it was very clear, we actually used the government's permitting process, we actually used their, when we issued projects to be evaluated one of the first things we asked is 'tell me what the permitting process will be for this particular project,' so they get first dibs. We review that and there's a part of the law where it says that if that project if that permitting plan is inappropriate, it's not done on plan, it has excess stuff that we know it doesn't need, we can actually build our own permitting plan. We never had to do that. All the permitting plans that went through, the government of Puerto Rico determined they actually worked with us. I gotta state this, it sounds like I'm upset, I'm not upset at any particular entity in the government of Puerto Rico, any particular person, I'm frustrated that the actual structure of our government has gone to where we are right now. Because everybody that I've talked to and I've worked with for the most part, and there are exceptions, there always are, were very earnest in wanting to achieve the same goals that we wanted, which is sustained economic growth, and we actually worked extremely close and very well with things like Junta de Planificación and other entities. And you know what? They could come here and give this exact same presentation and they could be at least as frustrated as I was, if not more.