Honduras

Honduras

By: Josue R. Cuevas

By: Josue R. Cuevas

Agenda:

1. History and Geography

2. Education

3. Economy

4. Infrastructure

5. Industry

By: Josue R. Cuevas

History and Geography

Is a republic in Central America. It was formerly known as Spanish

Honduras to differentiate it from British Honduras(now Belize).

Bordered to the west by Guatemala, southwest by El Salvador,

southeast by Nicaragua, south by the Gulf of Fonseca and north by the

Gulf of Honduras (Caribbean Sea).

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By: Josue R. Cuevas

With a size and population of approximately 112,492.5 km² and

eight million respectively (90% mixture of European and American

Indian, 7% Amerindian, 2% Black and 1% White), its capital is

Tegucigalpa.

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By: Josue R. Cuevas

Honduras has a multi-ethnic prehistory. Probably the most important is

the Mayan presence around the city of Copan (near to the border with

Guatemala). This population disappear around 1200 and when

Christopher Columbus reached the Bay Islands on the coast of

Honduras in 1502, by that time only Lencas and Ch’orti’ population

ruled Honduras (which made the Spanish colonization easier).

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By: Josue R. Cuevas

By September 15th 1821 the Spanish colony granted independency to

Honduras with the rest of the Central-American provinces (because

the local population fought for it for about 300 years)

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By: Josue R. Cuevas 7



By: Josue R. Cuevas

After more than 100 years Honduras was involved again in a war with

El Salvador in 1969 because of border issues; after Honduras won the

war the country was ruled by military forcers, by 1979 the country

returned to civilian rule (celebrated by general elections in 1981 where

Roberto Suazo Cordoba won).

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By: Josue R. Cuevas

Since the 1980’s the guerrilla in Nicaragua and continues threads from

other countries has forced Honduras to spend large amount if its budget

in military development ,becoming one the most powerful and feared

armies in Central-America nowadays (army used by USA government

for the invasion of Iraq and considered as an elite force during the

invasion)

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By: Josue R. Cuevas

Education

With a net primary enrollment rate of 92.5% unfortunately the

completion rate is approximately 45%. Above 80% of the population

is literate with education that include bilingual (Spanish-English) or

even trilingual (Spanish-English-German/Turkish) schools.

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By: Josue R. Cuevas

With more than 10 private universities and just one public university,

higher education in Honduras is considered one of the best in the Latin

America. Honduras has the best universities for agronomy and industrial

education in Central America (Zamorano and UNITEC universities

respectively). However, master and PhD programs are not included in

this educational systems.

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By: Josue R. Cuevas

Economy

The economy has a continuous but slowly grow, but the distribution of

the wealth remains very polarized with average wages remaining very

slow (something that changes during Mel Zelaya government in 2006-

2009); however more than 50% of the population still remains below of

the poverty line, though the average grow averaged 7%, one of the most

successful growths in Latin America.

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By: Josue R. Cuevas

With a about 30% of unemployment rate (which represents about 1.5

million people). Honduras is considered the third poorest country in the

Western Hemisphere after Haiti and Nicaragua.

After years of declining against the U.S. dollar the Lempira has

stabilized at around 19 Lempiras per dollar. In June 2008 the exchange

rate between United States Dollars and Honduran Lempiras was

approximately 1 to 18.85.

The GDP (Gross Domestic Product) in Honduras is estimated in 33.371

billion us dollars in total and 4,175 us dollars per capita.

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By: Josue R. Cuevas

A human development index (HDI) equal to 0.604 makes Honduras the

country number 106 in terms of education and life expectancy in the

world.

A great portion of the income in Honduras is thanks to tourism specially

in places such as Bay Island, Cortes, Gracias a Dios, etc.

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By: Josue R. Cuevas

Infrastructure

More than half of the energy supply in Honduras is run by private sector,

the challenges in this area are:

1. How to finance investment

2. Re-balance tariffs and environmental concerns during

construction of hydroelectric plants

3. Improve access to rural areas.

Transportation in Honduras consist of: 699km of railway (which was

build for agriculture proposes but stolen by international organizations),

13,890 km of roadways, 7 ports and harbors, 112 airports (where only 12

of them are paved and only 3 of them are for commercial airlines)

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By: Josue R. Cuevas

Many national and international non-governmental organizations have a

history of working on water and sanitation projects in Honduras, where one

of the most important is CARE international, which has many projects for

natural disasters emergency response and development in Honduras

(Rodolfo Cuevas: formal CEO in Honduras)

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By: Josue R. Cuevas

Industry

By 2000 Industry supplied about 32% of the Honduras’ total GDP,

providing about 21% of the total work force in the country. This industry

includes textiles (which is the largest one), automobile panels, furniture,

construction supplies, plastic, processed food, shoes, beer and soft drinks,

oils and agriculture (where the largest ones are the banana and coffee).

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By: Josue R. Cuevas

Assembly plant operations developed in the 70’s made Honduras one of

the favorite places for foreign industries investment (because of the free

trade zone established in Puerto Cortes-Honduras).

By 2002 Honduras was the second largest exporter on textile items on

the US market.

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By: Josue R. Cuevas

In 2009, because of the military takeover Honduras experienced a political

and economical crisis, the country had mass protests and fights between

the people and the government. Many industries experienced dramatic

drops in their income; representing reduction of the work force.

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By: Josue R. Cuevas

The political crisis meant for the construction industry represented a lost

of $201 million (34% drop compared with 2008), and a lost of 30,000

jobs for in 2009.

However, the apparel industry (textile) said that the situation was as

usual, since most of the companies have long term contract for supplying

US and European markets, and are exempt of any political regulation.

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Honduras