Alternative development and private enterprise

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In order to increase the vitality of alternative development, it is necessary to encourage radical change orientated towards future activities and efforts.

There is a strong need to develop productive projects that are sustainable with the passing of time and that result in real and tangible investments in zones of coca production and in zones from where people emigrate. In addition, such projects should allow for the development of a true structural alternative to coca and the drug trafficking economy.

Among the identifiable problems in coca-producing zones is a lack of capacity to market production at the raw material stage and as value-added products, once they have been processed or manufactured. Another problem is the lack of manpower and the absence of human resources training.

The aforementioned is quite evident, as in the past 15 years, following the approval of policies against drug trafficking, there has been no effective capital accumulating among families of the Cochabamba tropics and Los Yungas in La Paz. Rather, small scale production has been increased, based on family labor. We see in countries bordering Bolivia intensive agricultural production, accompanied by increased participation in the global economy.

The great phenomenon of soybean production in the Department of Santa Cruz is worthy of analysis. Such a product has been described with the same adjectives used for praising gold because of its high profitability and high power of generating development.

However, in Santa Cruz one cannot find plantations of 3 or 5 hectares of soya or state programmes that promote soybean production without training, or industrial plant without raw material. On the contrary, economic forces act freely and spontaneously, selfbalancing to bring about an optimal outcome of the conjunction of capital, research, machinery, manpower, costing, pricing, marketing, and so on.

Therefore, it is relevant to consider whether FONADAL, in its role of catalyst of alternative development will promote a product such as soyabean or promote the activities of those economic agents that will define this product or others.

These economic agents are limited to the private entrepreneurs who have developed a capacity to analyze and identify a profitable business, and will carry it into effect. The task involves the study of the product, its raw materials, costs, technology, seeking of a market and other activities.

Finally, we can conclude that one of the best options for bringing this effort to fruition is to promote private investment. Promotion of private investment will assure the correct use of economic, human and natural resources with the aim of optimizing results. Clearly, the private entrepreneur is the economic agent with the most interest and training for looking after the interests of a new productive unit.

FONADAL proposes to take a new turn in the strategy of alternative development by perfecting the actions being carried out with agricultural producers and extending on into a new phase where they are not the only protagonists of our plans, programmes and projects.

This major turn consists of pooling efforts with new protagonists: private entrepreneurs. Also, we shall complete the analysis and identification of institutions involved in alternative development with the help of small entrepreneurs. Those, unlike larger agricultural producers, are not intuitive for business but good at assuring themselves the best investment alternatives, which they achieve through the implementation of adequate techniques.

Immediate past experience clearly shows that better outcomes were achieved by encouraging private entrepreneurs to become involved in target areas for alternative development. However, this type of promotion has had neither a programme content structure nor the design of a true strategy for enabling the identification of promotion policies that potential investors can take advantage of.

On the whole, each of these entrepreneurs in alternative development have boosted their production, having established enterprises today found in the Cochabamba tropics.

Why not? Private enterprise is a sound option for alternative development.