CAFTA Advantage
Financier Wilbur Ross, whose International Textile Group owns Cone Denim and Burlington Industries, plans to open a $100 million denim mill in Nicaragua that should be operating by late 2007. Ross, a principal backer of the recently instituted Central American Free Trade Agreement, entered into an investment agreement with the government of Nicaragua to build the plant in the Jorge Bolantilde;os Abaunza Textile Park in Managua. The mill will employ 750 workers and have the capacity to produce 28 million yards of denim a year—enough to make 22 million pairs of pants, which, under the new agreement, can be exported to the United States free of duty and quotas.
