business

Usually, a photo essay about the EXPOCOMER trade fair becomes the lead business story in the following issue of The Panama News. Not this year, and that has only a little to do with the problems we’ve had publishing this issue.

In years gone by, EXPOCOMER was the occasion for the signing of international trade agreements and visits by government-sponsored trade delegations. It was a great place for reporters to buttonhole foreign ambassadors at the ribbon cuttings for their countries’ pavilions.

It used to be that EXPOCOMER was a good opportunity to gauge trends in the world commerce that passes through Panama.

This year, the big story coming out of EXPOCOMER was about security guards throwing teenage models who had been hired to work at some of the displays out of the trade fair, to enforce a new rule against those under 18 from entering the premises.

Every year for the past several years, EXPOCOMER has increased its restrictions on entry. Last year they forbade shorts and sandals, and restricted the first day’s attendance to buyers.

For several years, security guards at the press entrance have harassed representatives of the country’s smaller media, such that on a couple of occasions I had to plead the case for The Panama News’s existence with fair officials in an upstairs office. To avoid such insults, this reporter would pay for a ticket and get in as an ordinary member of the general public.

Once inside, there was for the past several years a multi-leveled decline to observe and report. Foreign enterprises were led to believe that in order to do business in this country, they must pay tribute to the illustrious families. So there was the time when I tried to have a serious conversation with a 50-something American sales exec, and we were continually interrupted by the clowning and boasting of a 20-something idiot with the “right” surname and an executive title who, in a trade fair anywhere else, would have been fired on the spot. So it was that there was once an Indonesian pavillion sponsored by the late George Weeden, featuring a venomous young punk from one of the Mireyista clans spewing out a continuous stream of invective against the press.

One key turning point came a few years back, when the Chamber of Commerce decided to take the control and income of the USA pavillion from the American Chamber of Commerce. The American display immediately and drastically shrank in both size and number of exhibitors.

The amount of business done at these fairs is generally announced at the end, but these numbers haven’t been the hardest and most reliable of statistics. Even so, the Chamber of Commerce had to announce declining numbers.

This year, the general public was excluded from the fair for its first three days and the fair hours were cut back. Thus my visit to ATLAPA on the Thursday of the fair didn’t get me in.

And with a crisis underway at The Panama News, I was just too busy to come back on the weekend. Thus no photos, and no estimate of the trends on display.

Congratulations, Mr. Carles and Mr. Del Valle. You have proven your authority, to the press, to a bunch of teenage models, and to the general public.

And you have also proven the increasing irrelevance of the Chamber of Commerce.





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Simple message, no details in Torrijos Seguro appeal
Petaquilla may have insider trading, securities fraud problems in Canada
EXPOCOMER takes itself out of the limelight
Business & Economy Briefs