business

The Panama Canal authority (ACP, by its Spanish initials) has signed or will soon sign agreements with several East Coast and Gulf Coast ports in the United States to jointly promote "The All-Water Route" between Asia and the eastern United States by way of the Panama Canal. The agreements commit the institutions to share marketing efforts, databases, economic research and technological advances in an effort to promote traffic along the route. The US port authorities participating are those in Houston, New Orleans, Savannah, Charleston, Norfolk and New York - New Jersey. The agreements are by way of renewable one-way memoranda of understanding, and the first of the series were signed with the New York - New Jersey and Georgia port authorities.

The National Bank of Panama (BNP) embezzlement scandal has gone steadily higher, wider and deeper over the past two weeks. With the number of people detained up to 30 --- 20 of them bank employees --- BNP vice-president for operations Galileo Ferrabone became the highest-ranking official yet to be interrogated by prosecutors and the investigation delved into allegations that customs duties as well as income taxes were diverted from the public treasury by the alleged embezzlement ring. One of the cashiers who is in jail in connection with the case claimed that Ferrabone was part of the plot, which he denies. He has not been charged with any crime.

The Moscoso administration's proposal to create a small Mireyista-dominated "executive committee" that would be given the Interoceanic Regional Authority (ARI) board of directors' powers to approve or reject contracts involving between $500,000 and $5 million. The draft law, proposed by Arnulfista deputy José Isabel Blandón, was stripped of that provision by the legislature's Canal Affairs Committee.

A proposed law to more strictly regulate the use of agricultural chemicals has been bumped off of the legislature's agenda, which means that it will die when the session ends on June 30. The proponent was Gloria Young, an Arnulfista deputy who was elected from San Miguelito but married a man from Baru and now hopes to get back into the legislature as a representative of that Chiriqui district. Banana workers, both the men who work in the fields in the women who work in the packing houses with their hands in chemical-laced water all day, have long been pushing for limits on the use of toxic chemicals, full information on the identities and natures of the substances to which they are exposed, and compensation for work-related chemical injuries. The banana companies --- mostly subsidiaries of or contractually linked to Chiquita Brands --- don't want such legislation. The decision to kill her proposal became an occasion for Young to level a vitriolic blast at members of her own party whom she says don't represent the interests of the people whom they are supposed to be serving.

Swiss-based food processing company Nestle has signed an agreement with ANAGAN, the nation's cattle ranching organization, reducing the amount it pays for milk by a penny a liter. The industry association says that's a $75,000 per month hit to its members' pocketbooks, but not as bad as it would have been had Nestle closed its remaining operations here, which buy about $400,000 worth of dairy products per month.

After a blockade that closed the Trans-Isthmian Highway for the better part of June 9 and 10, protesting kidney patients got what they demanded --- a promise of access to the medicine they need to live. The Social Security Fund had run out of cyclosporin, because in pursuit of his feud with Social Security director Juan Jované, Comptroller General Alvin Weeden had withheld approval of purchases of the medicine for about one year, until supplies ran out. President Moscoso ended the blockade by ordering Weeden to sign the purchase orders.

On the heels of several local protests, including one in which the Trans- Isthmian Highway was blocked in front of the Policlinica Hugo Spadafora (formerly Coco Solo Hospital), some 6,000 clerical and administrative workers for the Social Security Fund staged an eight-hour nationwide walkout on June 24. The demand is for approval of a $29.9 million emergency budget appropriation to pay for contractually obligated employee pay raises, higher utility bills and other costs. Comptroller Alvin Weeden is taking advantage of Seguro's operating shortfall to blame it on Social Security director Juan Jované, which is the norm in that long-running feud.

The contract to build a water main designed to resolve chronic supply problems in the eastern part of the Panama metro area has been awarded to Consultores Profesionales de Ingenieria SA (COPISA), for $33.3 million. The company is Panamanian-owned. Construction of the 21-kilometer main, which will be 78 inches wide at its start at the Chilibre water treatment plant and taper down to 72 inches at its end in Tinajitas, will force about 150 families to move. The IDAAN water and sewer utility says that the new main will not only get the water flowing to neighborhoods where it often doesn't, but also prevent shutdowns to the entire system when work is taking place on the present 66-inch eastern metro area water main. The extra water to fill the new main and serve those who presently aren't well served is coming by way of an expansion to the Chilibre water plant, a $48.7 million project for which the British firm Biwater holds the contract.

The Colon Free Zone Users Association, the duty-free import/export zone's merchants' association, has chosen Giovanni Ferrari to serve as its 2003-2004 president. He replaces Digna Donado. The association's next board of directors will include Hertzel Levy, Luis Carlos Chen Jr., Ezra Homsany, Nidal Waked, Nilda Quijano and Sourse Pierpoint.

The farm village of Agua Dulce has been cut off from the rest of the world and about 400 residents of La Esperanza have been obliged to take the long way around by Goverdale Interprice, SA, a foreign-owned company that bought a piece of real estate in Changuinola, Bocas del Toro, and blocked road that those communities had been using for more than 20 years. The law provides for an easement for such long-time users, but the company has some local officials on its side. Under its prior owners the same dispute arose, resulting in a court decision giving the communities the right to use the road. However, the corregidor is supporting the new owners' claim and the mayor is telling his constituents that they'll have to do without the road for the months or years that it will take to bring a lawsuit against the company.

Samuel Lewis Galindo has temporarily stepped down as head of the Banistmo board of directors in order to dedicate himself to leading the Solidaridad party in the 2004 election campaign. Solidaridad, whose founder and secretary-general is Lewis Galindo, has nominated Guillermo Endara as its presidential candidate. Lewis Galindo's broadsides against the Moscoso administration's corruption have generated protests from the government and widespread notice and agreement in most of the news media.

The Panamanian advertising industry is notoriously dominated by family cliques who steer business to media owned by relatives or who pay for the referrals without disclosing such conflicts of interest to their clients. It's also well known for monopolistic practices like offering advertisers a lower rate if they don't use a competitor medium, for little or no market research into which media are best for various clients' needs and for highly imaginative fiction about newspaper readership and radio, television and cable audiences. Now the major ad agencies' industry association, the Panamanian Association of Publicity Agents (APAP), is being accused of price fixing before the Free Trade and Consumer Affairs Commission (CLICAC). A Panamanian company, Controles de Inversion Publicitaria (CIP), makes its living monitoring which ads appear when and says that the association's members switched from using its services to those of a Brazilian-based competitor, IBOPE-TIME. CIP says that the Brazilians' prices are "subsidized" and that APAP member agencies are have conspired to both set low prices for those who offer them services and to keep ad prices high in a national advertising industry that has lost at least one-third of its total income since the late 1990s.

The national Ombudsman (Defensor de Publico) is taking on Panamanians' least- favorite monopoly, Cable & Wireless, for clicking off a minute of long distance calling time after the first 40 seconds, and the Ombudsman has in turn brought the case to the Free Trade and Consumer Affairs Commission (CLICAC). C&W's denial to the daily newspapers was less than categorical --- they say that their way of counting minutes is legal, despite a 2001 ruling by the Public Utilities Regulating Board (Ente Regulador) that telephone minutes must be counted by the 60 seconds that everyone else considers a minute to be.



Also in this section:
Business & Economy Briefs
Panama economic forecast
Marc Harris under arrest, controversy continues
ARI uses pseudonationalism to defend insider theft

Back to top