The US-based investment firm Morgan Stanley Dean Witter has issued a report saying that Panama's government bonds are a sound investment. The company says that although bribery scandals are likely to dominate the news this year, the government is stable and its commitment to pay of the national debt is likely to continue.

The nation's public debt stood at $8.4 billion at the end of 2001, of which $6.262 billion is owed to foreign creditors. The government paid a little over $1.5 billion on interest an principal on its debts last year.

The National Dialogue, a series of negotiations among the political parties and various social sectors about how to get Panama out of its economic hole, has resulted in an agreement to reform the law that created the Interoceanic Regional Authority (ARI) to allow the use of land and buildings in the former Canal Zone to pay for various development projects. The labor movement was the only participant that did not support the decision. Under the current law, ARI is supposed to go out of business in 2005, but for a variety of reasons many of its assets have not been sold. Critics predict that the agreement amounts to a land grab by politically well connected interests.

On February 7 the French BCE engineering consortium won the bidding to design a light rail mass transit system for Panama City and San Miguelito. BCE won the contract for $21.53 million after the government disqualified the only other bidder, Thales Engineering
& Consulting.

Panama Ports, a local subsidiary of Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa, says that it has suspended work on its $80 million expansion of the Port of Balboa because various government agencies are stalling permits and land that was according to Hutchison's contract with the government supposed to be turned over to the company in 2000 has yet to be ceded. The contract, which made reference to a map, was approved by legislators and signed by former President Ernesto Pérez Balladares without them ever having seen the map, and it turned out that some of the real estate was under ARI's jurisdiction, some of it belonged to the Panama Canal Commission (the predecessor of the present Panama Canal Authority), and some of it was Panama Railroad property. Permit problems are occasionally mandated by laws and genuine public interest considerations, but are also quite frequently a means by which corrupt public officials extort payments from private companies and individuals.

The allegations of bribery in the approval of the Colon Multi-modal Service and Industrial Center (CEMIS) have prompted a warning by the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) representative here, John Hastings, that his institution has "zero tolerance" for corruption and will not finance a project if it knows that bribery is involved. Last year the bank held up funding for the paving of the Pan-American Highway between the Bayano Bridge and Yaviza due to irregularities in the concession of the contract to do that job. The bank, from which some $70 million has been sought for the financing of CEMIS, has not yet approved or rejected the loan application.

Taiwan-based Evergreen, the world's largest shipping company, has announced that it is switching flags on 148 of its ships that were registered as Panamanian. The company says that the ships will now fly British or Italian flags, because Panamanian-registry ships face delays and discrimination in European and Chinese ports. The European Union gives preference to member states' ships, and due to the illegal sale of seamen's certificates to unqualified individuals by Panamanian maritime authorities many European coast guards submit Panama-flag vessels to special inspections. China discriminates against Panamanian-flag ships because this country maintains diplomatic relations with Taiwan.

The nation's socialized health care system has been getting much publicity for building and buying new facilities in the capital and in the Interior, but now it's also investing in some capital improvements in Colon. On February 6, Health Minister Fernando Gracia and Social Security director Juan Jované showed off Colon's new CAT scan machine, which was acquired with assistance from South Korea, and announced some $4 million in other capital improvements at health care facilities around the Atlantic side province.

Social Security director Juan Jované has a policy of surprise visits to the public health care system's clinics and hospitals, aimed at finding doctors and other employees who are not at their posts during working hours. Over the past year these visits have resulted in a number of disciplinary actions against absent or tardy professionals. In one such visit to Colon province, however, Jované found that a private company's construction workers on a public project were working without required safety gear and their employers didn't have them enrolled in the social security system.

On January 28 three workers for the Cable & Wireless telephone company were arrested and held on suspicion that they were bugging Attorney General José Antonio Sossa's office. Actually, they had been called to fix a problem with the phones at the Procuraduria. The detentions brought out the workers' colleagues, who picketed the offices while company executives contacted the ministry. The phone company workers were not installing wiretaps, and were allowed to leave after a day in captivity.

El Panama Amerioca reports that the white spot virus, the bane of commercial shrimp growers that devastated Panama's shrimp raising industry in 2000, was detected in a container load of frozen shrimp that was tested late last year at one of the Smithsonian Institution's laboratories. Ordinarily, frozen shrimp for human consumption do not pose an infection risk for commercial shrimp farms, but it is possible to spread the virus if those who work on shrimp raising tanks handle contaminated crustaceans and don't wash their hands before going back to work.

The Panamanian Industrialists Society (SIP) is warning that consumers may not be getting what they thought they are buying when they pick up their favorite brand of soap at the supermarket. It seems that illegal Asian imitations of preferred US brands have made their way onto the Panamanian market.

The National Environmental Authority (ANAM) is investigating the use of poison to gather shrimp from the Rio Corotu in Chiriqui's Baru district. Those responsible have not been caught, and the authority and health officials are warning people to avoid river shrimp of unknown provenance.

The director of the government's IPAT tourism bureau, Liriola Pittí, recently went to Paris with a delegation of Panamanian hotel executives. The purpose was to publicize Panama's attractions among potential French tourists.

The head of Panama's airborne police patrol, the National Air Service (SAN) says that the practice of private companies and individuals filling the tanks of their aircraft and automobiles from his agency's public pumps is "normal" and has been the rule for many years. Last year a comptroller's investigation revealed that more than a half-million gallons of the government's fuel were unaccounted for, and shortly thereafter the SAN's records were burned up in a fire that was said to have been caused by spontaneous combustion.

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