Incumbent governor loses primary

In a surprising upset, the incumbent governor lost his primary bid Sunday to Puerto Rico’s congressional resident commissioner, Jenniffer González-Colón who won the nomination of the New Progressive Party, receiving more than 56 percent of the vote. She is the first woman to be nominated for governor by the party. “I commit to being on the streets, to listen to people,” said González-Colón . She and the incumbent had run on the same ticket four years ago, but this campaign was often acrimonious. Meanwhile, Puerto Rico Rep. Jesús Manuel Ortiz defeated Sen. Juan Zaragoza in the primary held by the Popular Democratic Party. Ortiz and Gonzalez will face off against each other as well as candidates from other parties in November’s election. The primary was marred by power outages at several polling places, forcing voters to cast their ballots manually.

Jet Blue to bring crew base, new jobs to San Juan

Jet Blue announced that it will open a new crew base in Puerto Rico, the airline’s first-ever crew base located outside the continental United States. According to Travel & Leisure magazine, the new facility will open at the Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport in San Juan later this year. It will open in phases and have an eventual capacity for 125 pilots and 325 in-flight crew members. The facility will result in an anticipated 400 new jobs. The announcement comes as the airline is expanding service to and from San Juan to six new U.S. destinations, bringing the total to 18. The executive director of the Puerto Rico Tourism Company, Carlos Mercado Santiago, said that the new facility will “provide additional network expansion opportunities for the airline, as well as create new local jobs and increase the tourism industry’s contribution to Puerto Rico’s economic growth.”

Puerto Rico ranks 47th in global competitiveness report

Puerto Rico has ranked 47th in a study measuring global economic competitiveness, El Nuevo Dia reports. A total of 65 countries were analyzed in the 2023 World Competitiveness Report. The Island surpassed Mexico and Colombia in the study, which measures the ability of an economy to create an environment conducive to sustainable value production by the private sector. “There are many strengths for the Puerto Rican economy,” said Christos Caboli, chief economist of the World Competitiveness Center of the Institute for Management Development (IMD) which carried out the study. Among the Island’s weaknesses, according to the study, are its energy infrastructure and corporate income taxes; the Island ranked second-to-last in those categories. Puerto Rico also ranked 63rd in government bureaucracy and 61st in government transparency. Meanwhile, it earned higher marks for the growth of its trained workforce (#20) and the price of talent (#8). The United States ranked 9th in the report; Denmark, Ireland, Switzerland, Singapore, and the Netherlands ranked first. It was the first time Puerto Rico took part in the report.