Some 200 of the companies will come from Central American nations, as well as 150 from Mexico and 130 from Europe and Asia.
These were the expectations that emerged from a recent meeting of Mexican and Central American officials, including Guatemalan President Alfonso Portillo and the Mexican government coordinator of the Puebla-Panama Plan, Florencio Salazar.
It is hoped that the trade show, announced for June 27-28, will be a unique opportunity for making strategic business alliances that will contribute to development in southern Mexico and Central America.
In this way, the Puebla-Panama Plan, a regional development program promoted by the Vicente Fox administration, will start to attract private-sector investment into the eight development priorities outlined by the governments of the region: energy integration, building of a regional highway network, greater trade, tourism, telecommunications links, sustainable development, human development, and prevention and mitigation of natural disasters. A ninth initiative, on rural development, is expected to be announced.
A report on the state of the eight priorities will be presented to the annual summit of regional leaders. One of the first projects to get off the ground will be the building of an electricity grid interconnect between Mexico and Guatemala, which requires 60 million dollars in investments and could be completed next year. Another stage of the interconnect, between Panama and El Salvador, is also gett! ing unde r way.
Investments should also begin to flow soon to the construction of 16 highway projects in the region. "This year, we will see many infrastructure projects becoming reality, from major highways to ports and airports," President Fox said recently.
Progress on the first group of infrastructure projects is largely dependent on a total of 4 billion dollars in loans being authorized and released by the World and Inter-American Development Banks. One of the expectations of the PPP Expo-Inversion is that European development banks, especially Spain's Instituto de Credito Oficial, can begin to get involved.
The transportation ministers of Mexico and Central America will sign a memorandum of understanding in Merida, Yucatan this week for the approval of the technical details and the financing of the highway interconnections. The 16 new roads will be linked to two major highways: one running south from Veracruz to Honduras and then across to the Pacific coast, and the other along the Pacific through Oaxaca, Chiapas, Guatemala and on to Panama.
According to Florencio Salazar, the idea of the Puebla-Panama Plan is to solve severe socio-economic development problems through promoting economic growth.
"Otherwise, economic and social inequalities in the region sooner or later could become a national security problem for Mexico," he said.