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Harris County
Latin American Leadership Forum
News Release
Monday, April 20, 2009
 The Greater Houston Partnership hosted a news conference this morning to announce the 7th Annual Latin American Leadership Forum that will be held in Houston next week. Listen: RealPlayer MP3
"One of the things that I wanted to accomplish when I came here as president of the Greater Houston Convention & Visitors Bureau was to marry up the economic demographics of Houston and the groups that we brought, and also to do more international business," said Greg Ortale, in opening the news conference, citing next week's forum as an example of success in both areas, giving credit to Port of Houston Authority Commissioner Jim Fonteno for his part in attracting the conference.
"The trade relations between North and South America hold so much potential, not for just what's there now, but for the growth," said Harris County Judge Ed Emmett. "I think we are going to see that be really our blossoming flower, if you will, of international trade."
Norman F. Anderson, president and CEO of CG/LA Infrastructure LLC, said that the Latin American Leadership Forum, which will be held at the Westin Galleria, is an infrastructure marketplace, bringing the top 50 infrastructure projects from Latin America together with 400 infrastructure executives from the finance, policy, engineering/construction and equipment/technology fields.
"We don't do a lot of talking about infrastructure, we do a lot of talking about projects specifically," Anderson said. "So you'll have the head of the Panama Canal project, talking about that expansion project, which is the biggest project in the hemisphere. There is a new and innovative project in Mexico, a logistics cooridor, that's over a billion dollar project that is connecting northern Mexico from the Pacific to the Atlantic, including three dry port projects."
Anderson said that the projects range in cost from about $35 million to "I don't there there is any upper limit, except for maybe believability on the high side".
Among those attending the forum will be: Eduardo Ocampos, Governor of State of Pernambuco, Brazil; Fernando Bezerra, Secretary of Economic Development, State of Pernambuco, Brazil; Ismael Hernandez, Governor of State of Durango, Mexico; Aristídes Fernández, Secretary of State and President of National Energy Commission, Dominican Republic; Alberto Alemán Zubieta, the CEO of the Panama Canal Authority; Andrés Escobar, Deputy Director of the Department of National Planning in Colombia; Jorge Reynoso, Secretary of Economic Development for the State of Durango in Mexico; and many others.
Ortale said he hopes that the group decides to hold future meetings in Houston. Anderson said that is a possibility.
"You could argue that Houston is the capital of infrastructure," Anderson said. "It is the capital of the kind of infrastructure that the rest of the world needs."
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