The new buzzword for Panama's modernization as a world transportation crossroads is "multimodal." The idea is to link container movements among the country's major ports, the Colon Free Zone, the Panama Canal Railroad and expanded and upgraded cargo airports. The object is not to replace the canal but to complement it, making Panama a much more flexible and agile crossroads for world commerce.

But every modernization that has happened to every transportation infrastructure that Panama possesses has brought with it new law enforcement challenges. When the road on Colon's Costa Arriba went farther and farther, to its present terminus in Cuango, the drug shipments began to come ashore and move along the road almost instantaneously. The same thing happened when the road system was extended in Bocas del Toro. When new ports have been built, smugglers and thieves have promptly probed them for new opportunities. Every widened street, improved road and new railroad crossing implies new challenges for traffic cops. The development of aviation has brought air piracy, safety and smuggling issues in its wake. Every step forward in maritime navigation has implied similar problems.

At the University of Panama's School of Public Administration, which has programs to train Customs officials and Police administrators, they're trying to get ahead of the curve for a change. Thus on November 21 the soon-to-graduate Customs administration students in Fernanda de Sierra's class put on a forum on "Panama as the Multimodal Logistics Center of the Americas," and the future Customs officials and police administrators turned out in force.

Much of the forum consisted of presentations by representatives of the coming multimodal system's components, not particularly about law enforcement, but about the technologies involved, the history of how the industry has developed and where it is headed in the future. Customs and police officials may not need to know how to run a port or a railroad, but if they are going to enforce the law around such facilities, they need to know the industries with which they deal.

Introducing the session, Professor Sierra noted that "Panamanian foreign trade is in a phase of expansion and opening" and that Customs officials must confront their new role with new attitudes and the education of Customs officials must be modernized.

Legal advisor Erick Bravo said that multimodal transportation "is one of the greatest challenges that the Colon Free Zone has faced." He expects it to enhance the Free Zone's geographical and infrastructure advantages, making it the warehousing and distribution center of choice for the whole region. "Companies are looking for through which their merchandise can arrive most reliably, efficiently and rapidly to their customers." He noted Colon's increasing role as a supplier of other free zones, such at those in Miami, Manaus and Venezuela's Isla Margarita.

"It is said that the Colon Free Zone's prosperity is the product of money laundering," Bravo noted, "but this isn't true --- it's efficiency and commercial advantages."

Bravo pointed out the free zone's efforts to stamp out drug trafficking, money laundering and intellectual property privacy, pointing out the new intellectual property office as the only law enforcement facility of its kind in any free zone anywhere in the world. He cited low costs, no taxes and easy immigration rules as key elements in the duty-free import-export zone's success. He said that Customs and Agricultural quarantine officials have an important role in the Colon Free Zone, but warned that too much bureaucracy in these areas could negate some of Colon's advantages.

Bravo said that with the development of the CEMIS projects, the airport, sea ports, railroad terminals and free zone will all be in one enclosed Customs and quarantine enforcement area, which should make law enforcement a bit easier. "It will be a city of about 28,000 people by day," he said of the walled enclave to come.

Wtihout reference to the controversial remarks, the Manzanillo International Termina's personnel director, Nilda Quijano, a black lady from Colon, made the case against Labor Minister JJ Vallarino III's recent declaration to the Reuters news agency that Colon residents don't want to work. "The Port of Manzanillo is the pride of all Panama, and also of Colon, of which I am a part." Noting that more than 90 percent of the people who work at the port, which is run by Seattle-based Steverdoring Services of America and is Latin America's most efficient sea port, come from Colon, she said that "we are capable, and the success of this project shows it."

"In this type of industry, efficiency rules all," Quijano said, adding that a lot of the technical terms and relations with world commerce are in English (another factor that gives Colon, much of whose population is of English-speaking Caribbean origins, an advantage). She noted that the port's early decision to work with Customs, coast guard and quarantine officials, and to establish a tight security system with more than 200 guards, specialized dogs and a closed-circuit video surveillance system, has helped the company maintain security without unduly slowing operations. She also pointed to the port's in-house trucking system as one of the barriers against theft and smuggling. All of this technology wouldn't work without a labor force that's willing and able," she concluded.

The railroad's Gislen Gad-Paille, who was educated at the University of Baltimore and the University of Maryland, explained her employer's $80 million investment, which won't be moving at full steam until the bottleneck at the Port of Balboa is resolved. "The railroad is not, like some people think, a competitor for the canal," she said. Instead, it will allow ships to quickly drop off some containers and pick up others, providing the transportation industry new options to speed cargo on its way.

A key task of the Panama Canal Railroad is "to assure Customs and quarantine officials that we're secure and controlled." She said that security measures are in place, and noted that one of the important ones is that trains will not be making stops at which items can be added to or subtracted from the containers.

The forum's main speaker was Edgardo Voiter, head of the Colon Free Zone's Customs office.

Starting with the observation that Customs is a tool of the government's foreign policy rather than a power unto itself, Voiter briefly outlined the changing role of his agency.

In an earlier era, when the government's trade policy was protectionist, Customs was there to "collect and protect," and to the extent that high tariffs didn't exclude foreign competition with Panamanian businesses, Customs "super-inspections" often did. But more or less since the 1989 US invasion, Customs has been playing a different role. The successive post-invasion governments have been aggressively lowering duties, and Customs must now be more sophisticated about categorizing merchandise and assessing true values upon which duties are to be levied. This has meant "a complete transformation in Customs procedures," he said.

A key turning point, Voiter said, was the passage of Law 41 of 1996. "When you come to Customs, everything is complex, everything is tied up. Law 41 was designed to change that." He said that the Tax Code needs modernization, because its customs norms are antiquated in light of modern world commerce, and thinks that efforts to harmonize the tax laws with Law 41 are likely to progress.

That's going to mean constantly changing procedures in the short to medium term, the Free Zone Customs director noted. And thus, when they get into the work force the students he addressed are going to have to do some thinking and adopt a "critical attitude" when interpreting and applying new norms.

Voiter said that multimodal transport is going to imply many new challenges for Customs and that it is important for the whole country that these bet met. "Panama must be a country that gives competitive services, and that includes Customs services." To do that, Customs is updating its computerized record keeping and communications capacities, so that as the movement of containers speeds up, Customs agents won't lose track of things.

He also noted that the Free Trade Area of the Americas, if and when it happens, will have major implications for Customs. It might mean an international customs union. "Why not unify Customs in the sending, transit and destination countries?" he asked.