Chapter 109: That Time I Handed Out Investment Money in South America (3)

TL: Skye

Yu-jin's startup investment policy became the talk of the country.

Naturally.

With the state covering not just the funding but every scrap of education related to starting a business, interest was going to pour in from people who'd never had any to begin with.

Above all.

"His Excellency is looking for champions of industry to build up the strength of the nation!"

"What?! His Excellency wants this?! Then it's got to be done!"

"I'm going to make myself useful to His Excellency this time around too!"

It was loyalty to Yu-jin that got the would-be founders moving.

And so the Ministry of Industry, buried under a flood of applications, realized the consultation desks it had originally set up couldn't handle the volume and opened branch offices all over.

Libertad City Hall, the Southern Regional Administrative Center, the Northern Port Authority.

Temporary consultation centers went up in every major government building in the nation.

And one of those branch offices was set up in a rather unexpected place...

That would be none other than Tortilla Farm.

"...We're seriously putting one here too?"

Emilio, the civil servant dispatched from the Ministry of Industry, asked with a blank look on his face.

"Do the people here even qualify to apply?"

"What are you talking about? Everyone here is officially a citizen of San Marcos. His Excellency approved it, so of course they can apply."

"......"

Emilio had nothing to say to that.

Logically, it checked out.

Farm laborers were citizens, and any citizen could apply for startup funding.

Only.

"Do you really think this lot can come up with a legitimate business idea?"

"Yeah, good question..."

Results were another matter entirely.

Anyway.

Word of the startup investment program spread through the farm in under half a day.

The news that a laborer who got approved and launched a business could walk out of the farm had the farm laborers itching to move.

"Hey, they say if you write up a business plan you can get out of here!"

"Seriously?"

"No, I'm telling you, a guy from the Ministry of Industry actually showed up!"

"So all I have to do is pass the review and I'm out of here?!"

"LET'S GOOO!"

And so, that afternoon, a line formed outside the farm office.

A line with no end in sight.

Emilio sat down in the office chair and let out a sigh.

Something told him today was going to be a long one.

"Next."

The first applicant came in.

A man with a sun-blackened face and forearms covered in tattoos.

Former mid-level gang lieutenant.

Line of work, head of operations moving narcotics that came across from Mexico up into the United States.

That man laid a single sheet of paper on the table.

"Please give it a good look, sir!"

Emilio unfolded the paper and found a title scrawled in crooked, lopsided handwriting.

[International Logistics and Delivery Business]

"......"

Emilio slowly raised his head.

"International logistics and delivery?"

"Yes, sir. A business that takes goods imported from overseas and delivers them back out overseas."

"...I see."

Emilio took a quick glance at the man's criminal record.

Cocaine trafficking. 113 counts. Three prior convictions.

Emilio set the paper down and spoke.

"You're planning to run drugs, aren't you."

"No, sir! A perfectly legal logistics operation..."

"Next!"

The second applicant, a former gang boss, had a skull tattooed on his neck.

The name of the business the gang boss put forward was Caribbean Night Entertainment.

He'd apparently picked something up somewhere, because he'd written it out in English.

The problem was what the business actually was.

Operation of adult entertainment facilities.

Primary services: strip club, bar, lounge.

Projected clientele: foreign tourists and dockworkers.

Emilio slammed the paper down on the table.

"So, to sum up, what you're telling me is that you want to run a strip club?"

"It's a business that takes responsibility for the lonely nights of the foreign sailors docked at our ports, sir."

"Have you lost your mind? You want the state to sink its hard-earned money into that?"

"If you'd just hear me out, the profit margins on this are enormous..."

"Get out!!"

Third.

The corrupt ex-customs officer submitted a plan under the title Global Import Agency Services.

"You think I don't know you're in here because you were running a racket with smugglers?"

"N-No, this time it'd be completely legal..."

"Then bring me a different line of work! Next!"

And then the fourth.

Emilio was partway through a former con artist's business plan when he stopped.

[Caribbean Beachfront Real Estate Development and Sales]

Then, without a word, he tore the paper in half.

"...Why'd you tear it up?"

"Every square inch of land in this country belongs to the state. How exactly do you intend to sell it?"

"Well..."

"Next!"

Fifth, sixth, seventh.

All of it garbage.

A gambling den, a loan-sharking outfit, a gun repair shop.

Every last one of them an extension of whatever they'd been doing before.

Emilio wanted to slam his forehead into the table.

'Why the hell did I even come here...'

But there was nothing he could do about it.

It was His Excellency's order.

"...Next."

He called out in a lifeless voice.

The door opened and five men walked in.

Emilio lifted his head.

The air was different.

Unmistakably different from the applicants before them.

No tattoos, and none of that dull, glazed-over look in the eyes.

The man at the front greeted him crisply.

"Alejandro Mora. Formerly Trade Division Chief at the Ministry of Industry."

The four standing behind him introduced themselves in turn.

A budget officer from the Ministry of Finance, a procurement officer from the Ministry of Education, even a career man out of the Ministry of Construction.

They were here for nothing worse than failing the civil service Competency Evaluation; they were a different class of person from the criminals he'd been sitting across from all day.

The relatively sane end of the spectrum, so to speak?

Alejandro drew out a document envelope and set it on the table.

"Our business plan."

Emilio pulled the papers out and spread them open.

[Marcos Tech — Semi-Assembled Desktop Computer Manufacturing]

Emilio's hand stopped.

"...Computers?"

"Yes."

Alejandro explained evenly.

"We intend to import CPUs, memory, motherboards, power supplies, cases and the like from overseas, build them into finished units, and sell and supply them."

Emilio turned the page.

There were cost calculations.

Import unit prices, broken down by component.

Assembly labor costs.

Retail price of the finished unit.

Margin rate.

Emilio turned to the next page and found the supply targets laid out.

Priority 1: Government agencies — computerization of ministry offices

Priority 2: Public schools — for computer education

Priority 3: Private enterprise — office use

Priority 4: Households

Emilio turned yet another page.

Import routes.

Terms for dealing with Korean and Taiwanese parts manufacturers.

A tariff reduction plan leveraging FTAs.

Logistics flow.

Right down to a long-term roadmap for starting in hardware and expanding into software.

Emilio's eyes widened.

It was meticulous.

He couldn't find a hole in it.

"Honestly, with even a little knowledge, assembling a computer isn't difficult. It's a matter of plugging the right parts into a compatible motherboard. The issue is that San Marcos doesn't have that knowledge, and the sheer number of computers in the country falls far short of demand. As one example, the only ministries where computerization is fully complete are Finance, which handles the money, and Industry, which handles trade; the rest, as far as I know, are still in progress. And in the private sector there are any number of places with no computers at all. That's the gap we intend to move into."

Alejandro gestured toward his colleagues.

"Given what each of us used to handle, procurement bidding, budget management, logistics contracts, tax filings. That was our daily business as civil servants. We have more than enough administrative capability to run a company."

Emilio set the business plan down and looked at Alejandro.

"There's something to this... isn't there... sir?"

Emilio cleared his throat and corrected himself.

"...I'll put this forward for review."

Alejandro's eyes trembled, just barely.

The four men behind him glanced at one another.

Nobody said a word, but all five were thinking the same thing.

We can get out.

We can get out of here!

***

Two weeks later.

Presidential Residence, the office.

I was looking at the stack of documents piled on my desk.

"A total of 765 applications were received, and 181 of them passed."

"181... that's more than I expected to make it through."

"We applied the review criteria strictly, but the quality of the plans was higher than anticipated. A considerable number of them came from university graduates. And..."

Isabella hesitated, then continued.

"There is one application from Tortilla Farm that passed."

"Is that so?"

"You'll understand once you look it over yourself, but... it's a highly unusual case. And a viable one."

"If you're saying that, Chief of Staff, then I ought to take a look."

My interest was piqued.

Once Isabella had gone, I opened the summary file on all 181 business plans.

I turned them one page at a time.

A garment factory, food processing, seafood freezing, fruit juice manufacturing, a furniture workshop...

Every one of them had potential in its own way, and three in particular caught my eye.

[Caribbean Travel]

Representative: Tesio Marques. Graduate, Department of Business Administration, San Marcos National University. Guided tours for foreign visitors.

Reading through the plan, I was quietly impressed.

Tourism.

Right now, an enormous number of Korean tourists come to San Marcos.

But they're almost all young people who can sling on a backpack and wander around on their own; the middle-aged and elderly don't come.

The flight is long, there are no local guides, and forget Korean, even the English signage is a mess.

With no package tour products on offer, group tourists have no way to get here.

This young man had put his finger on exactly that problem.

'Impressive. Must be the university education.'

The second one was no less impressive.

[Libertad Daily]

Representative: Nicolas Herrera. Journalist, San Marcos State Broadcasting. Proposal for the first private newspaper in San Marcos.

I nodded as I read through the proposal.

'A single state broadcaster and nothing else was never going to fly to begin with.'

Frankly, this was something I should have thought of first.

A country of ten million people with exactly one news outlet.

Of course, the reason nobody had ever attempted a newspaper before was simple.

Illiteracy.

There had barely been any citizens capable of reading one.

There's no selling a newspaper to a man who can't read the words.

But things are different now.

Since the education reforms, the illiteracy rate has been dropping like a stone.

Elementary school enrollment rate of 95 percent.

Middle school and high school advancement rates climb every year.

Which means the number of citizens who can read a newspaper is growing fast.

A state broadcaster alone can't satisfy the public's right to know.

Sure, once private media exists, coverage the government finds inconvenient is bound to follow.

But that's a cost worth bearing.

A healthy press is a condition of a healthy nation.

'This one's necessary too.'

But compared to the third plan, a newspaper was small potatoes.

[Marcos Tech]

Representative: Alejandro Mora, former Trade Division Chief, Ministry of Industry. Import foreign computer components, assemble them into finished products, and sell them.

A computer assembly plant.

Honestly, assembling a computer is nothing special.

Get the parts, seat them in the motherboard, and that's it.

Drop in the CPU, slot the memory, fit the graphics card, hook up the power supply, mount it all in the case, and it's done.

It doesn't require advanced technology in the first place.

Just look at Korea.

When it comes to desktops, far more people build their own than buy a brand-name PC.

Korea is a country where people pick up parts at the Yongsan Electronics Market and throw a machine together at home in an afternoon.

But.

The important part isn't the assembly skill.

Getting the population comfortable with computers.

That comes first.

Korea didn't become an IT powerhouse overnight.

In the early 2000s, the government rolled out machines through the People's PC program, built computer labs in schools, and laid high-speed internet across the country.

With the entire population sitting down in front of a screen, the soil for an IT industry was finally there.

San Marcos has to walk the same road.

Computers have to go into the schools.

Civil servants have to be issued computers.

Businesses have to adopt information systems.

And the start of all of it could be this factory.

I read the proposal again.

'Dell Computer started out just like this too.'

It was solid to a degree that made it hard to believe it had come out of the farm.

Cost calculations, import routes, supply targets, staffing plans.

True to a career civil servant's hand, the administrative side was filled in without a single gap.

They'd been shipped to the farm for incompetence, but these men, as they stood now, had ability.

Take ability that was pointed in the wrong direction and turn it toward the right one, and this is what comes out.

'This right here is what rehabilitation is actually about.'

The point isn't to punish; it's to make a person usable again.

'Building Tortilla Farm was a good call.'

Satisfied, I laid the three business plans side by side and looked them over.

A travel agency.

A newspaper.

A computer factory.

Five years ago they'd have been unimaginable in this country, and every last one of them was exactly what this country needed now.

"Chief of Staff, summon the authors of these proposals to the Presidential Palace."

Isabella looked at the documents in my hand and asked.

"Yes, understood."

Watching Isabella walk out with the papers, I thought to myself.

'The base of the pyramid is filling in.'

Of course, it's still nothing much to look at.

But beginnings always look like this.

Korea was the same.

Small things gathered together and made the nation rich and strong.

San Marcos will get there too.

No, I'll make it get there.

Because only then...

'Can I retire and loaf around for the rest of my life.'

*****

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