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After months of delays, mainly caused by opposition from Colon Free Zone interests and Colon legislator Jacobo Salas, who is president of the Legislative Assembly, the legislature on June 16 approved a law to create the Howard Special Economic Area. The legislative package creates tax and customs duty breaks, labor law exceptions and special investor visa rights for a contemplated import/export, light manufacturing, warehousing and air freight handling zone at and around the former Howard Air Force Base. Salas says that once the president signs the law and it goes into effect, he will sue to have it set aside on constitutional grounds. The law passed on a 54-4 vote, with 33 of those votes being cast by suplentes rather than regular legislators.

On June 8 trade negotiators from Panama and the United States sat down in Los Angeles for three days of closed sessions to discuss agricultural, banking, telecommunications, intellectual property, maritime and dispute resolution provisions of a possible free trade agreement. The incoming Torrijos administration had representatives present and some alleged details of the talks leaked to the press --- mainly that the US was holding fast to its demand that Panama open up to American agricultural products and not budging much on Panamanian demands that the US eliminate its farm subsidies --- but by and large the talks are secret. The next round of talks takes place in Panama on July 12 through 16.

The Panamanian Business Executives Association (APEDE) chapter in Chiriqui is supporting a free trade agreement (FTA) with the United States --- but only if Panama would not be adversely affected. In the agricultural field, the business group said that the elimination of tariff barriers would be a good thing, but only if it is coupled with the abolition of US farm subsidies.

It seems now that the nation’s pharmacy owners are adding to the protests of farmers, organized labor and the left against the probably effects of a free trade deal with the United States. Humberto Chen, the president of the Union of Pharmacy Proprietors, told El Panama America that for his economic sector there are no tax benefits, because medicine imports are already duty-free. However, he said that because of the intellectual property provisions that the Americans are seeking, cheaper generic drugs may become less available, particularly anti-AIDS retroviral medicines. The group’s concerns echo those expressed in a report by the international physicians’ human rights group Doctors Without Borders, which opposes a free trade deal between the US and Andean countries because of the effect that they expect it would have on the price and availability of medicines.

Panama’s poultry producers’ association ANAVIP has come up with a novel way to protest what they fear will be a ruinous free trade agreement with the United States. They’re putting anti-FTA leaflets in egg cartons, in a bid to mobilize public pressure to exclude poultry from any free trade agreement.

The Panama Maritime Authority (AMP), whose director Bertilda García’s principal job qualification is her relationship to Mireyista insider and failed legislative candidate “Onassis” García, has not only driven up the cost of anti-terrorist ISPS ship certifications by giving an obscure Florida company a monopoly over the approval of security plans for Panamanian-flag ships. The AMP is also, according to the Japanese Shipowners Association, delaying the issuance of ISPS compliance certificates. The problem is that ships without such certificates won’t be able to enter US waters as of July 1. Such a squeeze would naturally create a great opportunity for officials to play the “no se puede” game --- “it can’t be done (unless and until my palm gets greased)” --- but the Japanese are warning that Panama will be sued for whatever economic losses that Bertilda’s games cause to Japanese-owned Panamanian-flag vessels.

Spain’s Iberia Airlines is about to begin direct flights between Panama and Madrid, and also offer similar services to Costa Rica and Guatemala. That will make it easier for Toro, who can’t get a US visa because of his alleged role in the sale of visas to Chinese citizens attempting to sneak into the United States, to visit the Disney park near Paris. Come to think of it, there’s a good chance that in a short while that may be Mireya’s substitute for a Disney World visit too. Airport security is heavier worldwide since the September 11, 2001 al Qaeda attacks on the United States, but the Bush administration has a very large list of citizens and non-citizens whom it will not allow to board airplanes --- very few of whom are bona fide terrorism suspects --- and the harassment at Miami has led to a greater demand in Latin America for air service to Europe that does not involve stops in US territory.

The Panamanian Business Executives Association (APEDE) has chosen attorney Enrique De Obarrio as its next president. The 42-year-old De Obarrio, a graduate of USMA and Georgetown, was the legal director for the Banking Superintendency and worked for a number of years for the Organization of American States.

The Asociacion de Usuarios de la Zona Libre de Colon --- the association of Colon Free Zone merchants --- has chosen Hertsel Levy as its president for the 2004-2005 term. The election was uncontested. He’s the owner of Decollection International, a textile import/export company.

The collapse of Banco DISA --- a business that was built on US government loan guarantees --- has been one of the country’s more instructive financial scandals of recent years. Most of the top management is about to go on trial to face charges of various white collar offenses. Meanwhile, one of the major depositors, shareholders and directors, Haralambos Tzanetatos, whose Curacao Eximport Enterprises banked there, has won a legal battle in the Supreme Court over his claim that the bank’s management improperly took $10 million of his company’s in a failed bid to stave off collapse. That got the money moved from out of the lowest priority --- that is, unrecoverable --- owner assets category. But that still puts Tzanetatos a ways from getting the money, which is still tied up in bank liquidation proceedings. Plus, the former bank management is alleging that Curacao Eximport Enterprises didn’t belong to Tzanetatos in the first place, but rather to an American investor. Like most Panamanian entrepreneurs, Tzanetatos suffered some severe business setbacks in the economic slide that lasted from late 1998 until mid-2002. (One of the more notable reverses was the failure of the Sears store on the Transistmica, in which he owned an interest.) But like many other Panamanian business owners hurt in the recession, Tzanetatos’s financial recovery may be first and foremost an occasion for creditors to celebrate.

Toro Pérez Balladares and Hugo Torrijos can now get their money out of the bank. The Supreme Court has issued a number of orders unfreezing assets frozen, and returning assets seized, in the PECC lighthouse and buoy maintenance scandal. According to documents produced by Comptroller General Alvin Weeden, Ports Engineering and Consulting Company --- PECC --- which got the contract to maintain the nation’s buoys and lighthouses from the old National Ports Authority --- then headed by Torrijos --- was secretly owned at least in part by Pérez Balladares. When the ports authority was merged into the new National Maritime Authority, its former number two man, Rubén Reyna, went to work for PECC and Reyna’s wife Dorita --- then Toro’s press director, now a RPC-TV talk show hostess --- became PECC’s landlady. Weeden, alleging conflict of interest on a grand scale, had PECC’s assets seized and froze some $6.7 million in bank accounts in Pérez Balladares’s, Hugo Torrijos’s and Rubén Reyna’s names. But the court held that this procedure violated due process.

On June 11 residents of the Arraijan neighborhood of Chumical, angry over a water shutoff that had lasted a week, blocked the road to the port of Vacamonte. After an hour or so the riot police arrived and the residents left peacefully. The IDAAN water and sewer utility said that the problem is a broken pump and no money budgeted to fix it.

It seems that San Cristobal Land Development and its promoter Tom McMurrain are laying low these days. First, they sent out emails to a number of their clients, saying that they’re moving out of their (largely empty) old Calle 50 office to bigger premises in order to give better service --- but didn’t mention where the new office is. Then, a UK-based company called Blue Forest, which claims that it was founded in 2003 and has 16 years of experience making tree houses, began using the San Cristobal phone number in its promotion of luxury tree houses at the “Big Bight” development --- a San Cristobal project --- but with no mention at all of McMurrain or San Cristobal. Then, Jerry Hall of the Latin American Better Business Bureau (directly) and attorney Michael Pierce (through a friend) contacted the editor of The Panama News, offering to mediate a settlement of the criminal charges that McMurrain, through his company, have brought. (These offers have been rejected --- Pierce represents, or represented, San Cristobal, and in any credible mediation the parties go to an independent mediator rather than one party using someone of his, her or its choice as an intermediary. Besides, it’s a patently bogus charge and the editor is not disposed to waive his rights to a legal counter-offensive.) Most recently, we received an email from a Dorothy S. Kirchoff, of Gainesville, Florida, which says: “In August 2002 I invested $106,000 in this company and was promised a return in 12 months. I have received no return. I receive no response to email and telephone calls go unanswered.”

Also in this section:
Business & Economy Briefs
Embera launch new effort to sell their art online
Rosas regime in public education approaches its end with scandals, protests
Former port workers want Hutchison Whampoa contract scrapped

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