New Mexico is in a position to compete and win business projects on a national scale that it was not in five years ago.

That was the message Matt Geisel, the new Cabinet secretary of the New Mexico Economic Development Department, presented at Albuquerque business organization Economic Forum’s Wednesday meeting at the Albuquerque Country Club.

"Now we find ourselves in a spot where we are not only competing with states in the Rocky Mountains, the Mountain West, Southwest, and western half of the U.S., but we are winning," said Geisel.

He pointed to New Mexico recently landing the Los Lunas Facebook data centeras well as beating out Texas for 900 Safelite jobs in Rio Rancho.

Geisel said New Mexico's competitive edge in recruiting businesses over other states comes largely from two incentive programs: the Local Economic Development Act (LEDA) and the Job Training Incentive Program (JTIP).

Geisel said without those incentives, the state would not be able to compete with 35 surrounding states for new businesses. Facebook was offered up to $10 million in LEDA funding to come to New Mexico and Safelite is also using $3 million from LEDA fund for infrastructure improvements to its Sprint Boulevard location.

He said the state's priorities for this year include maintaining LEDA's balance of $56 million and securing $12 million for JTIP.

Geisel said the incentives are not corporate handouts because they are post-performance based.

"On top of that, we are now finding ourselves in a position where we’re being invited to compete with southeastern states," he said. "What’s unique about that is southeastern states are the golden children of economic development. They’ve done very well over the last 10, 20, 30 years."

Geisel said LEDA has increased the state's entry level wage from $9 to $11 per hour, and it supported 23 projects in the state as of 2016.

He said 2,200 New Mexico residents have been trained through JTIP and the average wage paid to an employee trained through JTIP was $18 per hour as of 2016. Click here to go to the full article.