We started Sendas over a year ago to help build a better future for Honduras. This purpose immediately surfaced two hard questions: Why is Honduras stuck? Where should Sendas start?
In late 2025, we published Arrested Development, an in-depth diagnosis of the country's economic stagnation since 2008. Our next step was to identify opportunities to reignite productivity and growth, and that led us to begin a joint project with the Tecnológico de Monterrey. This analysis is not yet complete, but it already has one certain conclusion: reforming the electricity sector is essential to changing the country's trajectory.
The world's economy runs on electricity more than ever before, and Honduras has one of the worst electricity systems in the hemisphere.
The numbers are stark. Nearly one million Hondurans still have no access to electricity, and those with access face an average of 82 outages per year. For businesses, these outages carry direct economic costs that are not reflected in the tariffs: lost production and sales. Once these costs are included, our analysis shows the average industrial company in Honduras pays ~20% more for electricity than competitors in Guatemala or El Salvador. The fiscal cost runs even deeper. Electricity that is stolen, poorly metered, or never paid generates an annual deficit at ENEE (the state-owned electric utility) equivalent to nearly 1% of GDP. The accumulated debt of ENEE already represents roughly a quarter of the country's total public debt.
A deeper analysis of the sector reveals a system failing on multiple dimensions: ENEE buys expensive electricity, fails to collect full payment for its services, accumulates debt, pays suppliers late, and invests little in infrastructure. These failures are self-reinforcing, and no single part of the system can improve in a sustained way while the others continue to pull against it. As this vicious cycle continues, the system deteriorates at an increasing rate.
The gravity of the situation is what led us to publish Another Law — or the Electricity Sector Reform Honduras Needs. With this policy brief, we want to open a dialogue about the need for ambitious reform, because this is not about modifying the existing system. Honduras needs an electricity system capable of powering decades of economic prosperity.
A new electricity sector law is not enough. Honduras needs a reform that is ambitious enough to match the scale of the real problem. Without a functioning electricity system, the country keeps financing the crisis instead of investing in education, healthcare, technology, and infrastructure.
Honduras has the engineers, economists, financial and legal experts, and public servants needed to implement a modern and competitive electricity sector. What it lacks is a system that lets them do it.
I grew up in Honduras and built my career abroad, in places where talent is not just developed but given the opportunity to lead and produce results. Over thirty years, I’ve seen firsthand how companies built on talent and technology have disrupted industries across the world. These experiences have given me an appreciation for how much is lost when talent is wasted. Honduras wastes too much of it.
Sendas is a bet, rooted in the conviction that Honduras can build a better future. It is a Honduran project, built by Hondurans with the analytical independence to rigorously examine the country's challenges. The role of Sendas and our growing network of international collaborators — economists, policy researchers, sector specialists, and technologists — is to produce relevant economic analysis that helps shape public priorities.
Rigorous, evidence-based analysis, without undue influence from political or economic actors, is rare in Honduran public debate. But this type of analysis can open new conversations with decision makers and help build a shared understanding of what the country needs to change. Its impact will be hard to measure, and almost never immediate. And yet, we think it will compound over time, building a path toward a better future for Honduras.
There are no easy answers for Honduras. But the country can take on hard problems, of which electricity is just the first.
This is what Sendas is betting on.