Business & Economy Briefs

Hutchison wants to expand Port of Balboa
Panama Ports, the local subsidiary of Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa, has approached the government about the possibility of a $200 million expansion of the Port of Balboa, which would entail an expansion of the docks and more space to store containers. The plans would require an amendment to the privatization agreement by which the company won the concession to operate ports in Balboa and Cristobal.

Amador aquarium deal signed
On July 25 Second Vice-President Dominador Kaiser Bazan went to Los Angeles, California to sign a contract with renowned Canadian architect Frank Gehry (who is married to a Panamanian), for the design of a world-class aquarium on the former Fort Amador. The building is expected to cost about $37 million.

UNESCO moving out
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) which moved its regional offices to Panama in 1998, it moving out. The UN agency says it's part of a restructuring that emphasizes decentralization, and that some of the functions now carried out at its Albrook offices will move to Costa Rica, and others to Ecuador.

Bus riders get a break
People who ride the buses into Panama City from Panama Oeste and the Interior may now be able to save the cost of a taxi or another bus fare with each trip. National transit authority director Pablo Quintero Luna has announced that buses coming into the city from over the bridge will be allowed to stop in front of the Instituto Nacional on the Avenida de los Martires to discharge passengers, instead of being required to proceed directly to the National Transportation Terminal in Albrook.

Mayor Alemán denies government ties
Businessman Mayor Alemán, a PRD member who served as former President Ernesto Pérez Balladares's campaign treasurer, emphatically denies allegations by Comptroller Alvin Weeden that he is part of a small group of wealthy entrepreneurs who have been trying to get special favors from the Moscoso administration. Alemán denies that he does any business with the government. As the developer and principal owner of the National Transportation Terminal, for which he received a nominal fine for building on a wetland without an environmental impact study, Alemán benefits from the government's policy of compelling most bus services to use the terminal and every passenger taking a bus from Alemán's terminal to the Interior to put a nickel in the turnstile.

Penny a chicken tax protested
The National Association of Poultry Producers (ANAVIP) says that it will conduct a series of protest rallies to oppose taxes imposed on commercial chicken producers by the municipalities of Arraijan, Capira and Chorrera. The cities say that monitoring compliance with environmental and health regulations by the area's 42 commercial chicken raising operations has become costly and necessary, but the association says that the 1" per bird tax may force some of its members out of business.

New development in Veracruz
ARI has hired the architectural firm of F. G. Guardia y Asociados to design a 65-hectare development in Veracruz, not far from the former Howard Air Force Base. The development is to include housing, a shopping center, a school and a health clinic.

Hospital America cutbacks
Hospital America on Via España has closed down its in-patient wards and surgical suites, blaming the country's economic crisis. The laboratory and outpatient clinics will remain open. The 60-bed private hospital opened in 1994, but since an incident last year in which a woman died of an antibiotic-resistant "flesh-eating bacteria" infection after going to the hospital to give birth many patients and doctors have avoided the facility. The problem arose against a backdrop of economic recession that has depopulated private health care facilities and overcrowded public ones.

Glitch with Cristobal parking meters
On July 16 the city of Colon began to enforce usage of parking meters that it had installed in Cristobal, near the YMCA and Masonic Temple. Apparently the plan is to tape the area's shipping agencies and other businesses as a source of revenue. There have been, however, a couple of problems. First, as meters were not installed elsewhere in the city, people who used to park where there are now meters are parking farther away instead of paying. Second, most of the meters proved unable to accept the newer Panamanian quarters, which are apparently a little too light to trigger the mechanisms.

APL goes in-house
APL, the worldwide container transport company, has created a Panamanian subsidiary, APL de Panama SA. The new company has offices in Panama City and at the Manzanillo International Terminal in Colon. Previously, APL had been represented in Panama by independent shipping agencies. The change, which the company said it made because of its increasing position in Latin American shipping, is also part of a move by major shippers to handle work that shipping agencies used to perform "in-house."

US awards Fulbright Scholarships
Mayté Mitra, a project director with Panama's Grupo Financiero Delta, and Rosalba Moreno, who heads the legal department at Panama's women's prison, will be going to graduate school in the United States on Fulbright Scholarships, the US Embassy has announced. Moreno will study at the University of Minnesota and Mitra will go to Boston University.

Improvements at school labs
The Cabinet Council has approved an $11.7 million contract with the TSD-EDUINTER consortium to equip laboratories in the country's secondary schools. Some 273 public schools will receive equipment to teach physics, chemistry, biology and earth sciences. The improvements are in part funded by the government of Spain.

Opposition to textbook law
The Camara Panameña del Libro, the national book publishers' and sellers' lobby, has called on President Moscoso to veto a textbook law passed in the Legislative Assembly's recent session. The law requires most textbooks used in public and private schools to be written by Panamanian authors, but the chamber says that our national publishing industry is not big enough to make this law practical. Moreover, the group said that many schools where children can not afford books rely on foreign governments' donations of texts, which would be curtailed under the proposed law. The chamber and a number of educators are threatening a lawsuit if the law is signed, arguing that it unconstitutionally restricts academic freedom. The proposal is also opposed by the National Council of Private Enterprise (CONEP), which argues that it's bad for education, which in turn is bad for business.

IPAT puts off ad campaign again
The government's IPAT tourism bureau, which did little to publicize Panama's attractions before and during last year's tourist season although money had been appropriated for it to do so, has again postponed bidding on a contract for an advertising campaign in North America and Europe. Bids by eight Panamanian firms that were interested in the job were to have been opened on July 24.

Two RP banks get low rating
Fitch, the international rating service, has assigned Support ratings of 5 to Panama's Towerbank and Grupo Financiero Continental SA, the latter of which is the parent company of Banco Continental. In both cases Fitch noted that the banks can't rely on obtaining outside financing, although it said that such investment still may be forthcoming. The "5" rating is Fitch's lowest, not of the banks' underlying strengths and weaknesses, but of their ability to obtain credit if necessary.

Panama gets four new banks
Banking superintendent Delia Cárdenas has told La Prensa that four banks are coming to Panama. The new establishments in Panama City's banking district will be Portuguese-based ES Bank (Panama) SA, and three local subsidiaries of Guatemalan banks, GTC Bank Inc., St. George Bank Corp., and Banex International Bank Corp.