By: Adalberto Mendoza
Director of Market Research at Master Research
Edmundo Ramirez
Creator and Director at Master Research
In Mexico, the word crisis has been part of our vocabulary for many decades. We lack statistics indicating how many businesses close annually due to it, but based on the 4,374,600 businesses reported in the 2009 census and INEGI’s business listing that indicated that 13.6% of small businesses relocated or disappeared, therefore approximately 600 thousand businesses disappeared as a result of the economic crisis.
Coltan: “The Gray or Blue Gold”
Full-time Professor ITAM, School of Business
Despite being unfamiliar to the consumer market, Coltan is a mineral of such strategic importance in the industrial world that companies refer to it as the “indispensable magic dust.” Tantalite* and niobium are extracted from Coltan making it one of the most sought minerals since 1990 due to its unique features: rapid conductivity, resistance to strong electrical charges and high temperatures, capacitance (storing electric charges temporarily and releasing them when needed), and resistance to corrosion. Its main uses are in cellular phones, computers, electronic games, ballistic missiles, the aerospace industry, and intelligent weaponry. It is utilized in microprocessors, batteries, miniature circuitry, and capacitors. Coltan is so important that the Internet could not work without it.
Its price is as high as its demand. It is extracted in a primitive manner from open-pit mines since it is found in the subsoil less than a meter deep. Eighty percent of its world supply is found in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the rest is found in Australia, Brazil, Thailand and far lesser amounts in Canada, Ethiopia, Malaysia, Nigeria, and Rwanda.
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