Cuenca faces challenges in mobility, tourism and industrial expansion; today celebrates 201 years of independence with a varied agenda

Cuenca reaches its 201 years of independence full of challenges. Positioned as a tourist city, the Athens of Ecuador seeks to improve its mobility system, promote new rural destinations that allow it to continue generating foreign exchange and continue with the expansion of its industrial sector.

Since the middle of the last century, Cuenca has been a benchmark in different areas. It is recognized from basic aspects such as the quality of its drinking water and currently for being the first city in the country to have the first mass and electric transport service in Ecuador, the tram.

Although at the beginning the project was proposed as a great solution to internal mobility problems, reality is still far from expectations. However, the authorities are confident that when the pandemic situation subsides, this initiative will finally take off.

Concerts, festivals, fairs and gastronomic routes, among the previous activities for the 201 years of independence that Cuenca will experience this November 3

But this requires several aspects, such as integration with other modes of transport, such as public bicycles and urban buses, which represent a parallel competition to the system.

Another aspect that has characterized Cuenca in recent years has been the development of its industries. Kitchens, televisions, components, ceramics, tires, cardboard … are assembled and manufactured in the city.

Andrés Robalino, executive director of the Chamber of Industries, Production and Employment, recalls that this sector represents 40% of existing formal employment and 25% of economic income, which makes it the most important in the province, followed later by that of construction, commerce, health and tourism.

The main sectors are white goods followed by tires, ceramics, closely followed by plastics, wooden furniture and food. Robalino indicates that during the pandemic one of the lines that grew the most was that of cardboard, as the world adapted to a new way of buying, selling and consuming food. That made the cardboard packaging produced in this city the best of 2021, this being a great prospect in the face of the “new reality”.

With these elements, he believes that 2022 will be very positive and the objective is to return to the numbers that were truncated with the onset of the pandemic. In June, growth began to be noticed and the challenge is to solve some of the normal evolution processes that the pandemic has worldwide. For example, the situation of containers and the high prices of freight for ships that bring raw materials or finished products.

Diego Malo, general director of Ecoline, considers that one of the factors that have made Cuencans carry out their projects, despite difficult conditions such as a pandemic, is not to be intimidated by the problems and rather to find solutions.

“We are always subject to challenges, challenges, adversities and that has meant that in Cuenca we live with these changes and rather we are optimistic about what we are facing,” he says.

For this reason, it also calls on the national government to help them compete on equal terms with other international markets. “We do not want favors, we do not want subsidies, what we want is to compete on equal terms and for this we must restore that competitiveness that has been lost in recent years due to wrong policies many of the times and that somehow they have not allowed productivity grows the way it should, ”he says.

Malo refers that the growth of the capital of Azuaya in an industrial center is not a coincidence, since its people have always had very skilled hands to develop handicrafts that later became more technical thanks to the training and vision of the business sector.

Cuenca: event guide from Monday 1 to Wednesday 3 November

Although the so-called “third city of Ecuador” has been recognized for its architectural beauty and its impeccable historic center, the president of the Cuenca Chamber of Tourism, Juan Pablo Vanegas, explains that its rural parishes have been rediscovered, this being a space with great potential for the development of this activity, but from a more experiential and experiential perspective.

With urban expansion, rurality is closer and closer and that is why he considers that these places have a great present and future. Especially when the guides are people from the same community, who understand that treating tourists well is synonymous with development.

That is why he emphasizes that these festivities will serve to advance the process of reactivating sectors. (I)