business

Circulating among most of the Panamanian media thanks to anti-corruption activist Enrique Montenegro, and getting extensive coverage in La Prensa, have been a number of photocopies of checks made out by the Ministry of the Presidency to and invoices by the Handyman Corporation. On their face, what is suggested is that the government paid somewhere between $5,000 and $30,000 to remodel the private home of Mireya’s sister Ruby Moscoso de Young, who performs the functions of first lady in this adminstration. Falling well short of a full explanation and something short of a denial, the Moscoso administration suggests that’s not so. Meanwhile the company’s owner, Alejandro Valdés, made his initial denials, which a series of articles in La Prensa called into question, then left the country.

The Moscoso administration claims that an economic recovery underway. The Ministry of Commerce and Industry says that in Chiriqui province during the first seven months of this year 1,016 new businesses opened, as compared to 478 that closed their doors. These figures derive from business license figures, so don’t include the informal economy and don’t count businesses that shut down and don’t bother with the paperwork of canceling their licenses. The Ministry of Labor also reports a 26 percent increase in workers officially on payrolls. Part of this would be a reflection of efforts to crack down on the informal economy, but part is the product of new jobs. Rises in tax receipts, construction starts, auto sales and other indicators also show that the national economy is picking up a bit, although probably not by as much as the government would like to claim.

The Onion Gold company has announced plans to build an onion drying plant in Cerro Punta. The slopes of Volcan Baru are the nation’s onion growing center, and Panama’s food processing industry is in general not well developed. There is no word on how many jobs the project is expected to create.

The Japanese government is going to fund an agro-forestry development around the San Jose de Malambo Orphanage west of the canal. The planting of fruit-producing trees will not only help to shore up the soil near the canal’s Pacific entrance against erosion, but also provide food for the kids at the orphanage and for the lunch programs at several nearby elementary schools.

The government reports that the canasta basica, the nation’s measurement of the cost of living by way of the price of a basic selection of household staples, went down slightly in July. It was $185.33 in June and went down 47¢ to $184.87. Due to crop losses caused by heavy rains, one of the staples, onions has been hard to find in July and August.

The Catholic CARITAS social ministry, which opposes the damming of the Western Watershed to expand the Panama Canal, is protesting the Panama Canal Authority’s release of details of canal expansion plans to the US-based Discovery Channel while the same authority tells interested Panamanians that studies are still underway and the information is unavailable. According to Discovery, the project will cost $7 billion and the third set of locks that will accomodate post-Panamax-sized vessels will incorporate a feature to save and recycle fresh water from the lakes used to raise and lower the ships. The group also questions an increase in spending for publicity by the canal at the same time that interested citizen groups are denied access to information about canal expansion plans. Canal Affairs Minister Jerry Salazar has suggested that a referendum on canal expansion may be held next year, possibly by adding the question to the May general election ballots.

On August 15 a few dozen current and former Panama Canal employees protested in front of the Administration Building, alleging that the Panama Canal Authority has budgeted $66 million to hire an outside contractor to dredged the Atlantic and Pacific entrances to the canal. The workers say that this amounts to union busting and an unjustified diversion of of jobs and income from the Panamanian economy. Historically the canal has done its own dredging.

This time the grasshoppers have emerged after heavy rains and are eating up rice crops in the Santiago and Rio de Jesus districts of Veraguas province. Rubén Zeballos, the president of the Rice Producers Association of Veraguas (APAVE) complained to La Prensa that the Ministry of Agriculture isn’t doing much about the problem, and on a possibly more worrisome note, said that growers are using massive amounts of insecticides without apparent effect. That would suggest more toxic than usual food for consumers and another chemical-resisistant pest on the loose, which would amount to a serious failure for this country’s farm chemical regulatory policies. If the outbreak spreads much farther than the originally affected area, it could also affect the nation’s rice supply.

According to the regulations by which Panama’s privatized electric industry works, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry is supposed to periodically adjust and publish the prices that electric distributing companies must pay electric generating companies. The price is supposed to be based on prevailing internation fuel prices. However, the ministry has neglected this requirement, which led the ENRON subsidiary Bahia Las Minas generating company to set its own price for June and July and submit a bill for some $10 million to the Union Fenosa distribution company. Union Fenosa is accusing ENRON of inflating the bill and refuses to pay, and in return ENRON is accusing Union Fenosa of violating its contract. The Bahia Las Minas plant outside Colon uses fossil fuel-fired generators, and while during the rainy season Union Fenosa can buy hydroelectric generated power elsewhere, if the dispute lingers into the dry season and ENRON cuts off supplies, it could cause more than the usual brownouts for many electricity consumers.

The University of Panama is inexpensive, as the whole concept behind its creation and development has been to offer young people without many means in a relatively poor country a chance to develop into a middle class that will advance our economy. Now, however, it’s running a big deficit and the national government is unsympathetic. Thus, incoming rector Gustavo García de Paredes says that it will be necessary to increase registration fees. Such moves are traditionally the stuff of which violent student street protests are made, so if you are a metro area driver you may want to think about alternative routes that get you to where you want to go without coming too close to the university. The crunch time would probably be when the next school year starts in March of 2004, but while the issue is under discussion it may prompt disruptions.

So far this election season, Guillermo Endara is the presidential candidate who shows the most electronic candor, maintaining a website as Martín Torrijos also does, but in addition running several email lists to keep the press and various groups of supporters advised on the stands he’s taking. One of those supporters --- Endara’s daughter --- sent a bunch of emails to her personal list, advising of the Endara website’s existence, whereupon Cable & Wireless Panama alleged spamming and threatened to block access by those who use C&W as an Internet service provider to the campaign website. In an open email protesting the threat to Cable & Wireless, Endara challenged the company: “If you want to oppose my candidacy, and as a consequence, abridge my constitutional rights, say so once and for all because I’m itching to fight for my rights and those of the people who support me.” The company, whose board of directors includes several cabinet members and Mireya Moscoso relatives, said it’s not taking sides in the election.

Contractors for CBS are dismantling the Survivor village sets on the Perlas Archipelago islands of Gibraleon and Mogomogo now that the Survivor Panama competition is over and set to go on the air in North America in mid-September. Meanwhile hotels here, particularly the Hotel Contadora, are bracing for an influx of the show’s fans. The Panama News knows of at least two such groups who will coming down here in the next few weeks.

It’s the stuff of which interesting historical arguments are made, but many Panamanians believe that the US would still be occupying the Canal Zone and running the canal were it not for a small group of high school students from the Institudo Nacional who took their protest to Balboa High on January 9, 1964. A scuffle there escalated into violence that cost 27 lives and left hundreds of people injured and led to a rupture in Panamanian-American diplomatic relations and ultimately to a long negotiation process by which Panama gained sovereignty over the old Canal Zone and eventually control over the canal. Now, almost 40 years later, the Instituto Nacional class of 1964 wants one of the vacant buildings in the former Canal Zone for a permanent archive, museum and office. However, Arnulfo Arias lost the 1964 election because he considered the student protesters a bunch of thugs and was one of the few Panama City doctors who refused to lend a hand to treat the many casualties, and the current Arnulfista government similarly doesn’t think much of yesteryear’s protesters. Thus Mireya’s ARI director, Alfredo Arias, has turned down the class of 64’s request for space, arguing that the authority in charge of property that Panama acquired through the Carter-Torrijos Treaties doesn’t have anything that would meet the alumni group’s needs.

Not the slums of El Chorrillo or Curundu, or the narrow streets of the Casco Viejo or Santa Ana, or the urban sprawl of Tocumen or Pacora. The Union Fenosa electric company told La Prensa that some 70 percent of its electricity theft losses come from upscale Paitilla.

The paving of the Pan-American Highway from the Bayano Dam in eastern Panama province to the road’s end in the Darien town of Yaviza has been promised for a long time and has started and stopped several times. Earlier in the Moscoso administration, it was delayed when the bid rigging for the paving contract was so flagrant that the Inter-American Development Bank withheld funds. Now the job is on again, and large amounts of gravel and sand will be needed. However, one Amador García, who says that he has and has had the rights to the Darien’s only gravel pit, complains that the Ministry of Public Works is trying to take the pit away from him and give it to a Colombian company. At a press conference sponsored by Enrique Montenegro’s National Front Against Corruption held to air this complaint, Public Works Minister Eduardo Quirós burst in to call Montenegro an actor in a farce and promise criminal charges against him, while Montenegro called the minister “thieving, overbearing, abusive and corrupt.” The underlying claim about an alleged mining rights grab seemed to get lost in the shouting.


Also in this section:
Business & Economy Briefs
Roadwork going slowly
Presidential candidates on the FTAA
Mireya calls for Harris investigation

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