business & economy

Also in this section:
"Serial scam artist" sets up shop in Panama
Developments in the Panama Canal expansion debate
Hotel owners express doubts about mega-port project
The Panama News readership statistics
Business & Economy Briefs

Business & Economy Briefs

Construction strike averted

Playing their usual brinkmanship, the SUNTRACS construction workers' union and the Panamanian Chamber of Construction (CAPAC) reached an agreement on a new contract just in time to avoid a scheduled May 29 strike. A few days before reaching agreement, the union was demanding 60 cents per hour more over four years and the industry group was offering four cents per hour more over the same period. The agreement gives the most skilled workers 60 cents over eight years worth of phased raises and unskilled laborers 49 cents over the same time. SUNTRACS is the nation's most militant union, but it generally has a good sense of what the market will bear when contract negotiations take place.

Real estate licenses up

The Ministry of Commerce and Industry (MICI) is giving out some 25 percent more real estate dealer's licenses than it did a year ago, according to El Panama America. It in part reflects a real estate boom, driven in part by foreign retirees. However, a crackdown on people selling real estate that they don't personally own without a license to do so is also driving part of the increase.

Amador zoning approved

The Housing Ministry (MIVI) has approved a zoning plan for Amador that will allow the foundation created for the Biodiversity Museum to finance its work by developing and selling homes in several high-density residential zones along the causeway. The parcels amount to 2.7 hectares, and buildings of up to 10 stories will be allowed on them.

Reverted Areas bulk sales

The old Interoceanic Regional Authority (ARI) is no more, but the government is still in the business of selling off the former Canal Zone, now through the Ministry of Economy and Finance's Reverted Assets Administrative Unit. The latter organization is putting large blocks of real estate up for bids: a 115-hectare area in Nuevo Veracruz near the former Howard - Kobbe - Farfan US military complex and a nine-hectare area in Brazos Brooks on the Atlantic Side.

Assembly land sale fails again

The National Assembly's second attempt to sell a 15.2 hectare parcel of wooded land at the former Fort Clayton failed on June 1, for the same reason that the first attempt was abandoned: there were no bidders. Environmentalists say that the land is within the boundaries of the Camino de Cruces National Park and vow to fight any attempt to develop it in court. The plot was given to the legislature several years ago by the Interoceanic Regional Authority (ARI) to build a new legislative palace, but a combination of budget woes, environmental objections and the preferences of many legislators and assembly employees to stay in Panama City's downtown area led the assembly to reject the Clayton site in favor of rehabilitating and expanding their current facilities. So the legislators are trying to sell the parcel, but no developer cares to buy into protracted litigation. The legislature says it will try again, and the Comite Pro Defensa de Bosques Urbanos y del Parque Nacional Camino de Cruces promises to continue its opposition.

Panama sets new coffee price record

Daniel Price Peterson, who grows a rare and prized breed of geisha coffee at his farm in the Chiriqui highlands, sold his product for $50.25 per pound in a May 30 auction held by the Specialty Coffee Association of America. It's a new world price record, beating the price that a Brazilian competitor had been getting for his coffee beans. In a 2004 auction, Peterson's beans from the same coffee grove sold for $21 per pound, which at that time set a world record.

Government sides with Chiquita against workers

It should be no big surprise, since First Vice President Samuel Lewis Navarro is a major Chiquita Brands shareholder. The union representing workers at the COOSEMUPAR cooperative, SITRACHILCO, wants to get the co-op out of a money-losing deal with Chiquita that obliges it to sell bananas to that Cincinnati-based multinational at well below world prices and has an alternative arrangement worked out with an Italian company, Ale Fruit. Given that the workers own the co-op, it's not surprising that at a June 4 assembly the membership voted to break with Chiquita and deal with Ale. But the co-op's officers, supported by Chiquita, have challenged the right of both the union and the co-op membership to take this action, and the Torrijos administration, through the Panamanian Cooperative Institute, are backing Chiquita. COOSEMUPAR is the cooperative that was created when Chiquita abandoned its Puerto Armuelles plantations. But Chiquita retained control through an exclusive marketing arrangement, which essentially slashed its former employees' wages and benefits. Now, through the co-op leadership, Chiquita is seeking effective control of that organization despite the membership's vote.

STRI denies any tie to mafia-linked Prime Forestry

Prime Forestry, a teak reforestation scam that was run from Switzerland by people associated with New York's Genovese mafia family and whose Panamanian subsidiary includes as one of its directors Agriculture Minister Guillermo Salazar and as two of its endorsers President Martín Torrijos and First Lady Vivian Fernández de Torrijos, has nothing to do with the PRORENA reforestation experiment, Yale University or the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI). Prime Forestry, which was shut down by Swiss authorities because it's a fraud and because of its mafia ties, claimed on its website and on the website of the Rainforest Action Group a tie with PRORENA, a joint STRI-Yale project to investigate various reforestation methods. But STRI issued a statement denying the connection or any other tie with Prime Forestry and demanding the deletion of the false claims from the Internet. Salazar claims (falsely) that the Swiss government's action was just a matter of a technical change in licensing laws, and says that the Panamanian subsidiary will continue to operate here. But Britain's Financial Mail notes that a dozen other countries have taken action against Prime Forestry, and thousands of foreign investors may soon be trying to recover what they can from the company's assets here.

Tourism up

The Comptroller General reports that this past peak tourist season Panama received 17.1 percent more visitors than it did a year before. There were slightly fewer cruise ship passengers and a lot more people just passing through, principally people flying to points around Latin America on COPA Airlines, which uses Panama as its hub. There was also a light increase in the number of tourists who flew in to spend some time here. The government pays cruise liners for each passenger who disembarks here, and these tourists tend to spend relatively little money here. Some of them, however, like what little they see here and later come back for more extended visits. Later this year the government will review its policy of paying for cruise ship passengers.

Narcs destroy coconut shipment

Georgina Rivera Miller, a Colon businesswoman who exports coconuts from Colon's Costa Arriba and Kuna Yala to Italy, complained in La Prensa that anti-drug prosecutors, customs agents and agricultural quarantine officials, claiming to be searching for drugs, destroyed a $90,000 shipment of coconuts in the port of Cristobal on May 10, but found no drugs. The prosecutors deny damaging the shipment and say that they conducted the raid based on an anonymous phone call. Compensation for destruction of property in drug raids is almost unheard-of in Panama, but one phenomenon that is known is for business rivals or personal enemies to have police and prosecutors trash someone else's business by way of making a bogus anonymous tip.

Panamanian public TV signs deal with Cuba

On May 23 Panama's recently renamed SERTV network --- the government's Canal Once --- signed a deal with Cuba's Prensa Latina news service to share news items and live transmissions, and to jointly produce documentaries. Prensa Latina is owned and strictly controlled by the Cuban government, which tolerates no independent journalism. There are now 25 journalists serving prison time in Cuban jails and prisons.