On February 14 a one-year-old Ngobe girl died of starvation in the Colon district of Cocle del Norte. The child's parents were part of a group of landless and unemployed persons from the Rio Sereno area of Chiriqui who wandered to the remote and infertile hills of western Colon province in search of land to till.

According to Credit Suisse - First Boston, based upon figures from the Comptroller General, Panama's balance of trade deficit was $1.8 billion in 2002 (16 percent of GDP), up from $15.billion (14 percent GDP) in 2001. They cite a "very recent surge in imports" and a generally weak demand for exports. The bank analyzed the two major components, the Colon Free Zone and the rest of Panama, separately. On the Free Zone side of it, there was a trade surplus of a half-billion dollars, which amounts to 4.7 percent of GDP, but that surplus was down from $.7 billion (5.8 percent) in 2001. The overall business of the Free Zone, as measured by imports, was down some 8.5 percent last year. For the rest of the Panamanian economy, exports declined 11 percent, consumer imports were up 5 percent and capital imports were down 5 percent.

Members of the Motta family have bought a 30 percent interest in Cochez y Compañia SA, a company that sells building materials. The construction industry has been hit hard by Panama's prolonged economic crisis, which has in turn hurt its suppliers. That lowers the prices for investors who want to buy shares of companies in the sector at this point in the business cycle. Some of the Mottas had been in the construction supply business before via Aceros Panama, a supplier of steel rebar rods. However, slow sales here and fluctuations in the world steel market forced that business to close its doors last year.

The Supreme Court has rejected a challenge to Panama's anti-monopoly laws on behalf of Empacadora Avicola SA and Productos Toledano SA, two of several defendants in a lawsuit brought by the National Union of Consumers of the Republic of Panama (UNCUREPA). The consumer group claimed in a 2001 lawsuit that poultry producers and supermarkets conspired to fix the price of chicken. The court's decision allows the lawsuit to proceed.

President Moscoso has rejected organized labor's requests for a substantial increase in Panama's minimum wage. There are variations by region and occupation, but the minimum wage is around $250 per month, which some of the unions want to triple. The usual biennial process of business and labor negotiations over the minimum wage broke down without an agreement, leaving the matter for the president and cabinet to decide. Though the president has not made a specific decision, she says that the minimum wage increase will be minimal. The most militant of the nation's labor federations, the Independent Unions Unity Confederation (CONUSI), promises street protests about the matter. However, as the economy is weak and the CONUSI leadership tends to be pragmatic about which demands they press, the protests are likely to be token.

Payless ShoeSource, a US-based company, has announced plans to set up its Latin American distribution center in the Colon Free Zone. The company also plans to open two more retail outlets in this country, part of a planned Latin American expansion from 400 to 600 stores. Most of the shoes that Payless sells are made in China or Brazil.

The Public Services Regulating Board (Ente Regulador) has vetoed PRD legislator Andrés "Domplín" Vega's attempt to sell his radio station, which occupies 94.5 on the FM dial, to Green Emerald Business Inc. The board said that the prospective buyer had not demonstrated that at least 65 percent of its shares are owned by Panamanian citizens. The Panamanian Constitution provides that the national media shall be owned by Panamanians, but given the anonymity granted to corporate owners by law, the increasing prevalence of international broadcasting media and other factors this requirement is not always enforced. In the case of a PRD legislator making a request before an Arnulfista board there is less flexibility.

The Supreme Court has voided a decree from the Pérez Balladares administration that prevented the upscale Coronado beach development from barring access to the beach except by residents and their guests. The Panamanian Constitution clearly provides that beaches are public property, and moreover bars discrimination on account of social class. However, the rule of law is merely theoretical when well connected persons wish to appropriate public recreational assets for themselves. Coronado's long-standing argument has been that although the beach may be public property, the roads that get to them were privately built and are privately maintained.

Under the Moscoso administration, national tourism is not a priority. The president and her ministers set the example for the rich by leaving the country on vacation at every opportunity. Panama province's governor, Irlena Brown, is enforcing the policy for the poor by reducing the number of permits for buses that take people from the city to beaches. Many residents of beach communities will not be displeased because busloads of people from the city translate into trash strewn along the beaches and rural outings for all of the city's social problems. Moreover, at some beaches and popular river bathing areas emergency rescue personnel have been blocked out of prompt responses to calls by double-parked buses. That latter problem led to a petition by the Red Cross and the SINAPROC disaster relief agency, which in turn prompted the governor's action.

US-based Chiquita Brands, which has so far had little success in its efforts to hit up the Panamanian government for subsidies and convert its Puerto Armuelles Fruit Company subsidiary into a non-union "independent co-op" that can only sell its fruit through Chiquita, has named a new person to negotiate for these demands. The new vice-president for governmental affairs is Manuel Rodríguez, and his job not only includes dealing with the Panamanian government but also the much larger talks with the European Union about its banana import rules.

The Ministry of Economy and Finance has switched the base year upon which the amount of the Gross Domestic Product is calculated, and the result is that the Moscoso administration will claim a 2002 GDP that's about $900 million more than by the old method, which was adjusted for inflation on the basis of where the dollar was in 1982. The higher paper value for the GDP, along with the earlier announced commingling of Panama Canal and national government figures, allow the administration to increase the public budget deficit notwithstanding the legal two percent of GDP limit on government deficit spending. Economic analysts for major international banks don't denounce the accounting changes per se, but point out that they are ineffective at masking the government's increasing deficit or avoiding lower public bond ratings for Panama.

Anyone who shops for food and pays utility bills knows that the cost of living is up. The Moscoso administration, however, has added a few items to and removed other things from the "canasta basica" --- a representative basic collection of household consumer goods upon which the cost of living is figured --- in order to "prove" that the prices we pay for the basics have dropped from $209.64 per month to $184.81. Except for a relatively small number of fools, nobody is fooled.

The Inter-American Development Bank has moved executives around, and that gives the institution a new representative here. Returning to the head office in Washington after four and one-half years here is John Hastings, and taking his place is Jeremy Gould, whose previous assignment was in Barbados.

The American government, worried about the possibility of some enemy smuggling weapons of mass destruction into the United States by sea, has imposed new Customs regulations that require shippers to declare their US-bound cargoes 24 hours before the ships carrying them leave port. However, the Panamanian Exporters' Association says that this regulation will create a hardship for its members, especially with respect to perishable shipments and in cases where US authorities delay acknowledgement of pre-shipping declarations.

Although the Public Services Regulating Board had ordered both Cable & Wireless and BellSouth to desist from the practice more than year ago, recent calls from pay phones to C&W cell phones that resulted in no answers have been charged to the pay phone users. The current regulation says that if a caller hangs up within three seconds of the voice mail message coming on, he or she doesn't get charged for the call. However, the UK-based phone company has been charging for such calls. Cable and Wireless was supposed to lose its exclusive fixed line telephone concession at the beginning of this year, but has with government support maintained its now illegal monopoly. Minister of the Presidency Ivonne Young, Minister of Economy and Finance Norberto Delgado and Vice-Minister of Economy and Finance Domingo Latorraca are members of the Cable & Wireless Panama board of directors.

Despite earlier arguments that international law prevents this country from banning the shipment of highly radioactive materials through the Panama Canal, the Panama Canal Authority has prohibited the transit of a ship carrying a 950-ton nuclear reactor from an Edison plant in San Onofre, California. Were the ship to sink in Gatun Lake or Culebra Cut, it would poison the drinking water supply upon which most Panamanians depend. The company promised to send an emergency team to deal with any problem, but the authority said that the plant exceeded a 150-ton limit on radioactive shipments through the canal. Due to the 1977 Carter-Torrijos Treaties, Panama may not impose such limits on US military ships and the authority has argued that the right of innocent passage that's part of international law keeps it from banning most radioactive waste shipments between Europe and Asia. Environmentalists dispute the latter interpretation of the law and want to ban the waste shipments.