Baja Biz

baja-business dot com – a platform for business oriented reports and information concentrating on the Southern Baja California peninsula. Baja Business is edited in La Paz and published via servers in European data centers. If you have any contributions, please get in touch with us.

Baja California is a very popular holiday destination for North Americans living on the West Coast. Although most tourists concentrate in the areas around Ensenada (just past the border south of Tijuana), and in the Los Cabos region, at the very southern tip of the peninsula. Here you can find modern tourist facilities which — according to Baja California official visitor’s guide — “have been designed to conform to the environment”. Most of these facilities however, resulted in creating massive tourist resorts which eventually marred the natural environment, and these areas have been attracting even more investors with tourist development plans which lack strategic long-term thinking and environmental policies. However, the Baja peninsula offers significant eco-tourism attractions: the region’s clear and tranquil waters, its lagoons and wetlands, marine reserves and desert landscape framed by the Sea of Cortez (defined as “The World’s Aquarium” by Jacques Cousteau) are only some of its marvelous natural beauties. Of course this tourism attracts business of many different kinds from foreign and Mexican investors.

In order to succeed you must educate yourself regarding the rules of the game; of course, this is true of investing in any country. The U.S. businessman at home understands enough about his country’s civil laws and tax code to intelligently manage a legal or fiscal professional. The foreign client is vulnerable to professionals over complicating the matter, overcharging for services or short cutting the legal process. The client often ends up paying government fines for non-compliance and repays someone to do the work correctly.

If you are a U.S. citizen the first agency to contact would be the department of trade in your state. Somebody in the state commerce or economic development department has the responsibility for advising you on commerce with Mexico.

The Small Business Administration has computerized training programs on international trade and, in the Western United States, have folks who are knowledgeable about trade between the U.S. and Mexico. These agencies are a good resource for identifying educational opportunities close to your home and typically have someone they work with on the Mexican side of the border to refer you to as well.