Uruguay: worker-owned tannery has closed, despite st - leatherbiz: Lea Leatherbiz

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Uruguay: worker-owned tannery has closed, despite state loan

28/04/2016
A change of government in Uruguay at the end of 2015 has led to big changes in the way a national development fund, FONDES, will run in future.

An idea that the previous administration brought into force in 2010, FONDES sought to help worker-owned companies, including tanneries. In the following five years, it approved loans totalling almost $70 million to 28 different projects.

Now the new government of Dr Tabaré Vázquez has said it will split the organisation in two, with only part of its work and budget devoted to co-operative projects and the other part dedicated to encouragin small and micro-business projects across the country.

Magdalena Domínguez, a Montevideo-based economist, has calculated that six of the 28 original FONDES projects have already closed down, one of them being a tanning company called Cooperativa El Águila, which received almost $1 million from FONDES.

Another tannery helped by FONDES, Uruven, is still running, although it was forced to close for two months in 2015 to carry out improvements to its waste management systems.



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