New ‘shoe city’ planned for Ecuador

Ecuador’s new footwear capital is proposed for Tungurahua Province.

A concentration of footwear production facilities is proposed for the Ecuadorian province of Tungurahua, which will allow shoemakers to manufacture collections and sell them directly to consumers on site. According to initial reports, the project will be completed in 2018.

The president of the national footwear industry association, Lila Villavicencio, has said that the project will mean much more than simply relocating existing footwear businesses. She has expressed her belief that the ‘shoe city’ will be a turnaround for national footwear production, and that it will become a tourist attraction creating lots of jobs.

Estimates from Ms Villavicencio’s organisation suggest that the footwear industry in Ecuador currently employs some 100,000 personnel and in 2014 was responsible for sales of $560 million.

Publishing Data

This article was originally published on page 2 of the December 2015 issue of SATRA Bulletin.

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