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Also in this section:
Business & Economy Briefs
Anatomy of a scam, part two
US pleads with RP over mad cow restrictions
Business & Economy Briefs
Panama regains FAA Category 1 status
The US Federal Aviation Administration has restored Panama’s “Category 1” aviation safety rating, which had been downgraded three years ago due to the current administration’s neglect of firefighting crews and safety equipment at Tocumen Airport. The restoration of this country’s rating means that American aviation authorities now certify that the problems have been corrected to the point that Panama now complies with international standards, and that Panamanian airlines --- at this point just Copa --- are now free to acquire more landing rights at US airports. Copa greeted the announcement with one of its own: on June 17 the Panamanian airline, half owned by members of the Motta family and half by Continental Airlines, will begin offering nonstop flights from Tocumen to New York’s JFK Airport.
Public health system runs short of medicines
Seguro Social and the Health Ministry have over recent weeks often run out of the anti-retroviral drugs that patients with HIV use to prevent or delay their infections from degenerating to full-blown AIDS. That has caused Dr. Orlando Quintero, the president of the anti-AIDS group PROBIDSIDA, to go public with his complaint about it. Back in 2001, after protests about similar problems, the legislature passed and the president signed Law 1, which was supposed to end such problems. However, Quintero told La Prensa that the law has become a dead letter. It seems that this is not a matter of discrimination against people with HIV, but a generalized problem having to do with the Moscoso administration’s priorities. Also complaining about the frequent unavailability of life-saving medicines have been organizations of kidney transplant patients who can’t get anti-rejection drugs, hemophiliacs who can’t get the blood coagulants they need, and cancer patients whose chemotherapy is disrupted by shortages of the compounds used in their treatments. The Ministry of Health has ducked questions about the shortages, while Seguro director Rolando Villalaz said that his institution is trying to alleviate the problems by way of emergency special purchases.
Copa/Continental in bidding war for Avianca
Panama’s international airline, Copa, which is half owned by the US-based Continental Airlines, is in a bidding war with Brazil’s Sinergy corporation to buy Colombia’s bankrupt national airline, Avianca. According to La Prensa the Copa-Continental bid is for more money than Sinergy’s and contemplates keeping Avianca’s distinct identity after the acquisition and a reorganization.
Amador marina and cruiser port at Amador doesn’t pay
The Fort Amador Resort & Marina (FARM), one of the few success stories that the Interoceanic Regional Authority (ARI) can show in recent years, may not be something to brag about after all. FARM owes the government $690,000 in back rent, and says that it won’t finish the planned $15 million investment unless and until the government puts a four-land highway down the Amador Causeway. So will the deadbeats be foreclosed? Not likely. The problem is that the privately-owned project is funded by the government-owned Caja de Ahorros savings and loan institution. FARM got its concession under the Pérez Balladares administration when Nicolas Ardito Barletta was running ARI. Under Ardito Barletta’s watch there were theoretically high standards about who could bid for Amador development projects, but in practice many applicants lied about their financial resources, won concessions based upon these fraudulent statements, and then went looking for financing. In most cases the projects never got off the ground. So does the timing of ARI’s insistence on payment mean that the marina concession will be part of the booty in a Mireyista lame duck looting binge?
Cardenas residents complain of park sale
ARI has sold many of the houses in the former Canal Zone by advertising their neighborhoods as “garden communities” with lots of parks and green space. Then the authority has moved in to sell off the parks and the green spaces. Now the people of Cardenas, like those in Albrook, Curundu Flats and Clayton before them, are complaining of this tactic. The lot in question is part of a park, says the Cardenas Property Owners Association, and should remain so. Ah, but the guy who approved the sale, ARI director Alfredo Arias, has this thing about parks. The nephew of Mireya Moscoso’s late husband, Arias --- along with Mireya --- is one of the tiny group of property owners whose land would be served by the controversial Boquete-Cerro Punta road through the Volcan Baru National Park. He’s also resisting citizen protests about ARI’s attempt to sell part of a national park at the edge of the former Fort Clayton in order to create another shopping mall.
Sewage detracts from Azuero Fair
The Moscoso administration is blaming the fair organizers. The education minister can’t be bothered. But meanwhile a street that runs between the Azuero International Fair and the Nicanor Villalaz elementary school in La Villa de Los Santos is overflowing with raw sewage, disrupting both the school and the fair. IDAAN is blaming the fair for having an inadequate drainage system. The fair’s organizers say that its sewers and drains are big enough and properly maintained, but that IDAAN has allowed developers to install new commercial and residential projects in the area and hook up to the existing sewer main instead of building new ones, which causes an overflow during the fairs. Meanwhile, vendors with raw sewage lapping at the edges of their fair booths aren’t doing much business and teachers and parents of children at the school are talking suspending classes until the fair and the stench go away.
CSS collects about two percent of arrears
According to El Panama America, the Social Security Fund (CSS) had with two weeks to go in the grace period for debtors to pay what they owe and avoid interest and penalties recovered just over $2 million of the $129 million owed to it. However, let us not be misled by statistics: $79 million of that debt is owed by the government, so the $2 million collected actually represents about four percent of the private arrears owed to the fund. Although there will probably be something of a last-minute rush to pay, in most cases businesses haven’t paid because they can’t afford to pay.
Also in this section:
Business & Economy Briefs
Anatomy of a scam, part two
US pleads with RP over mad cow restrictions
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