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The Moscoso administration has made its top priority in free trade talks the location of the headquarters of a Free Trade Area of the Americas in Panama. However, US President George W. Bush’s brother Jeb, the governor of Florida, wants it in Miami and there are other contenders as well. Panama’s chances have suffered two big setbacks in recent weeks, as Nicaragua has thrown its backing to Miami and Costa Rica its support to Port of Spain, Trinidad-Tobago. There is little chance that George W. Bush will risk losing Florida by allowing a decision other than Miami to be made before the November US elections, and by that time Mireya Moscoso’s presidency will be history.

Just in time for election advertising season, Torovision has cut the ad agencies’ cut of the action. The agencies were receiving an 18 percent commission for ads they placed with MEDCOM’s RPC and Telemetro networks and Panama City’s Cable Onda cable system. Now they’re only paying 15 percent. MEDCOM is principally owned by former President Ernesto Pérez Balladares and his relatives and counts the son of former President Nicolás Ardito Barletta as its new CEO. Panama’s advertising agencies have arrangements with the principal corporate media that give business who use agencies lower rates than those who attempt to buy advertising directly, and part of this arrangement is an agreement by the agencies to steer their clients to specific media, regardless of their particular publicity needs or the demographics of whom those media reach. Last year Panamanian television sold $116.4 million in ads.

Salvadoran President Francisco Flores, at a luncheon with Panama’s Chamber of Commerce, offered to lend Panama the services of the team of experts his government used to assist in the negotiation of the CAFTA free trade agreement with the United States. Although there is widespread agitation against CAFTA in the Central American countries, most of the region’s governments are firmly controlled by right-wing parties that will almost certainly approve the pact. The main obstacle to CAFTA’s ratification is likely to be in the United States, where it may not garner the necessary votes to be approved by Congress.

TRICOM, the Dominican telecommunications company that lost its bid to provide mobile phone services that the courts held are too similar to the cellular telephony for which Cable & Wireless and BellSouth enjoy exclusive concessions until 2007, has sold its Central American and Panamanian subsidiaries to a Panamanian investment group for $12.5 million. TRICOM lost nearly $300 million in 2003.

Is some hustler promising you, an American looking to buy a retirement home in paradise, title to land on an island in Bocas del Toro? Article 121 of Panama’s Tax Code prohibits the sale of island land to foreigners. That law is now being challenged before the Supreme Court, however. A suit filed by lawyers for real estate interests maintains that the tax law provision is unconstitutional because it conflicts with Article 286 of the constitution, which allows the sale of public lands. As a practical matter foreigners have been able to buy possessory right to such lands for some time now, but a big part of the publicity that a number of unscrupulous foreign real estate fraudsters disseminate over the Internet promises residency visas under Panama’s reforestation laws, which can’t be legally had if the property interest that the investor holds is a possessory right rather than full title.

Singapore doesn’t actually produce much that Panama uses. The island city-state does some light manufacturing and has almost no agriculture. However, like the Colon Free Zone, Singapore is one of the world’s great commercial center, and like Panama City, Singapore is an important financial services center. Singapore could become a bigger importer of Panamanian agricultural products, but in return might want some concessions that allow them to compete in Panama’s financial and commercial sectors. So does free trade between the two countries make sense? Apparently the two respective governments think so. On February 17 negotiations for a Panama-Singapore free trade agreement began in Panama. The talks are expected to take a year or so before any deal is reached, during which time the government of Panama will have changed.

Never mind. After two bidding processes had been declared null and void, the Social Security Fund (CSS) was set to sign a no-bid contract with Constructora Azuero, SA to build a new maternity ward at the Social Security hospital in Los Santos. Constructora Azuero, SA, as in the company owned by the Escalona family, as in Government and Justice Minister Arnulfo Escalona’s uncle. The current government is infested with Escalonas in high-paid jobs. CSS director Rolando Villalaz had told Los Santos residents and subordinates that Constructora Azuero would get the job, and one of those subordinates took the story to the press. The CSS and the Moscoso administration then backtracked, saying that the contract had not been signed and starting an investigation of the Seguro Social administrator who blew the whistle.

The director of the Casco Viejo Office, Supreme Court magistrate Winston Spadafora’s daughter Vanessa Spadafora, says that the government is set to expropriate 38 vacant lots in the colonial era Casco Viejo neighborhood. The young woman who neglected preventive maintenance of the historic Flat Arch, which collapsed last year, says that vacant lots are a danger to the public. They’re also a potential windfall for the persons into whose hands they end up.

Increases in the retail price of fuel on the eve of the long Carnival weekend have prompted protests from many sectors of Panamanian society. Premium gasoline is up to $2.12 per gallon, while diesel is up to $1.54. That has the nation’s bar association, the Colegio de Abogados, calling for the government to re-regulate fuel prices and the bus syndicates threatening to call a strike. President Moscoso has also criticized the price increases and the cabinet has passed a resolution allowing more petroleum imports in order to force prices back down.

A number of communities, particularly in Panama Oeste, charge buses or individuals fees for access to public beaches or swimming holes along river banks, generally using the proceeds to hire people to clean up the litter that the crowds leave behind. This has been challenged by provincial governors (who are appointed by the president rather than elected), basically as a turf battle over who gets to collect fees. Panama provincial governor Irlena Brown, who has taken control over bus permits to take passengers from the metro area to beaches in Panama Oeste, asked Administrative Prosecutor Alma Montenegro de Fletcher whether it’s legal for the municipalities to charge a cleanup fee for beach access. The procuradora has opined that while local governments can not charge for beach access as such, they can charge a fee to cover cleaning costs.



Also in this section:
Business & Economy Briefs
Photo developer adapts to changing technology
Guilty verdict in BANAICO case
Carnival jobs

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