business & economy

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Canal watershed development allowed in legislative sneak attack
Dolphin park controversy continues
Former port workers persist in years-old demands
Business & Economy Briefs

Business & Economy Briefs

Torrijos misrepresents AFL-CIO stand on FTA

While most Panamanians were getting ready for Carnival, President Torrijos went to Washington to lobby for the US-Panama Free Trade Agreement. Among those whom he met were leaders of the AFL-CIO labor federation, one of the key opponents of this and previous and still pending free trade deals. Afterwards the presidential website and those of the state-owned SERTV radio and television networks declared that "unionists... support the ratification of the Panama - United States FTA" and quoted Linda Chavez-Thompson, a leader of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and one of the people with whom Torrioos met, as saying that "the success of the trade agreement will be beneficial to Panamanian and US workers." But a source in the AFL-CIO leadership told The Panama News that Chavez-Thompson didn't say this and that the labor federation's opposition to the trade pact remains unchanged.

Colombia backs off from Free Zone restrictions

The Colombian government, which had announced that it would restrict imports of shoes and textiles from the Colon Free Zone starting in March, says it will hold off on that measure. The new announcement came after a meeting on February 12 between Colombia's and Panama's Customs directors, Juan Pablo Ortiz and Daniel Delgado Diamante respectively, at which greater bilateral cooperation against smuggling, tax fraud and money laundering was promised.

Singapore company to develop new Rodman port facility

The former Rodman US Naval Station, now home to Panama's National Maritime Service coast guard, is about to get bigger. Singapur PSA International has been granted a concession to expand that relatively small set of docks and facilities into a new commercial port. So far there have been few details announced about how large the expansion will be.

New pay TV options coming

When one considers the political ties of some of the people involved, all manner of theories, some stranger than others, could be woven. In any case, MEDCOM and DirecTV, who have split the nation's cable or satellite pay TV market between themselves for more than a decade, are about to get four new competitors. Technical Information Group Inc, Corporacion de Frecuencias SA, Compañia de Comunicaciones SA and CTV Redes & Telecomunicaciones SA have all been granted concessions to compete in this market on the national level. The Latin American signal of DirecTV is owned by a company dominated by Venezuelan billionaire Gustavo Cisneros, whose Panamanian partners in the venture are members of the Motta family which also controls the TVN and TV Max stations. MEDCOM is owned and controlled by a number of people with close ties to the PRD, reputedly including former President Ernesto Pérez Balladares (we don't know for sure about his personal stake due to Panama's corporate secrecy laws, but we do know that his cousin heads the company), and owns the Cable Onda cable system as well as the RPC and Telemetro networks. The English-speaking community here has seen the selection of English-language signals reduced by both MEDCOM and DirecTV in recent years and for ideological reasons --- particularly as Cisneros has been one of the principal financial backers of the Venezuelan opposition --- the TeleSur network that's jointly owned by the governments of Venezuela, Argentina, Uruguay, Cuba and Bolivia has not been available on cable or satellite TV here. New competition may or may not bring new channels for people here.

New taxi zone plan stalls

Although higher new taxi fares still seem inevitable, the metro area zone map that the Land Transportation and Transit Authority (ATTT) had been considering contained 124 zones and negotiators for the taxi syndicates objected that it was way too confusing to be practical. Now other options are being considered, one of which is the installation of taxi meters, which have not so far been a part of Panama's way of life.

New Panama adventure map

In a February 15 ceremony in Washington attended by President Torrijos and US Ambassador to Panama Eaton, a new tourist map of Panama that was jointly produced by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the National Geographic Society and the Panamanian Tourism Institute (IPAT) was unveiled. The map, in English, contains information about eco-tourist attractions, historical and archaeological sites, bird watching areas and recreational facilities. A companion book, National Geographic Traveler: Panama, will be published this fall.

URS Holdings gets canal environmental study contract

The Panama Canal Authority (ACP) has awarded the contract to do to do the environmental impact study for the Panama Canal expansion project to a consortium headed by US-based URS Holdings and which includes private foundations controlled by the administrators of the University of Panama and the Autonomous University of Chiriqui. The ACP itself, rather than the National Environmental Authority (ANAM), will rule on the validity of the study. Given past practices, this is probably a pro forma exercise that's unlikely to affect the canal administration's decisions about what it intends to do in which places. At least insofar as the University of Panama administration is involved in the consortium, it's also likely to be a substantial political plum for the PRD. There were three other bidders, all of which included the University of Panama as partners in one way or another. The University of Panama is headed by rector Gustavo García de Paredes, a PRD activist with a fake doctorate bought from a Francisco Franco-era diploma mill in Spain.

Ceville: Faúndes Law doesn't apply to Solís Palma

Manuel Solís Palma, the figurehead president installed by General Manuel Antonio Noriega in the months between the purported annulment of the 1989 elections and that year's US invasion, now works as an aide to the Minister of Education. However, his right to hold the job was challenged pursuant to the "Faúndes Law" that prohibits people over the age of 75 years from holding public sector jobs. That law was passed to get rid of an elderly Supreme Court magistrate who had been caught in the act of negotiating a $20,000 bribe to allow a Colombian drug trafficker to go free but remained on the court because only a bare majority of legislators --- less than the two-thirds required --- would vote for conviction in the impeachment trial. The has had a profound effect on the University of Panama and the legislature's oldest deputy, Susana Richa de Torrijos, has been spearheading a campaign to repeal it. Meanwhile, Administrative Prosecutor Oscar Ceville has opined that the law doesn't apply to Solís Palma, whereas a few months ago he said it did apply to octogenarian businessman Arturo Melo, who was chairman of the board of directors of the state-owned Banco Nacional de Panama. Now the argument about the Faúndes Law seems to have been sidetracked from arguments about not wasting the talents of the elderly versus giving younger people a chance to advance in the public sector to a dispute about whether Panama has the rule of law or just the whims of political caprice. That's because Ceville didn't give any coherent reason why he thinks the Solís Palma and Melo cases are different. The Administrative Prosecutor's opinion has great weight in the government but does not bind the courts.

French company buys into Las Minas power plant

Ashmore Energy International (AEI) has sold its 51 percent ownership (indirectly through a subsidiary) of the Bahia Las Minas power plant in Colon. AEI is the main shareholder in Elektra Noreste, one of Panama's main retail power companies, and last year when it bought Prisma Energy International that gave it a controlling interest in the power plant. However, Panamanian law forbids companies to engage in both power generation and retail electricity sales at the same time in this country, so AEI divested its interest in the 120 megawatt oil-fueled plant, which is being converted to be able to use cheaper coal. This is Suez's first entry into the Panamanian market, but it has other Latin American ventures in Peru, Chile and Brazil. The deal was for the most part a swap, with Suez trading its natural gas business in Peru for AEI's share in the Bahia Las Minas plant.

Legislators get their own radio and TV channel

The Public Services Authority has approved new radio and television channels for the National Assembly. Let us not besmirch the name of CSPAN by taking a comparison between the new Panamanian media and the US congressional TV channel too far, but the sort of programs that are anticipated will be roughly similar at least in their genres.

Urban development forum

Panama City Mayor Juan Carlos Navarro is bringing in architects, engineers, urban planners and other experts from several Latin American countries, the United States, China and Spain between March 20 and 22 for the Foro Panama 500, a public gathering to consider the policies, plans and public works that the city ought to have in place by 2019, the quincentennial of its foundation. (That is, from the Eurocentric perspective. Pedrarias the Cruel established his capital at Panama Viejo in 1519, but it was already inhabited and archaeological evidence suggests that the city had been the site of a pre-Columbian settlement for at least 1,000 years before that time.) In recent decades the city has seen explosive growth without a whole lot of planning and we now face a lot of pressing infrastructure needs and some unanswered questions about urban policy. The mayor is the public official in the best position to talk about such matters, but the Panamanian political system gives municipal governments relatively few powers to confront modern urban challenges, instead centralizing functions into such national government institutions as the Ministry of Public Works, the Housing Ministry, the Land Transportation and Transit Authority, the IDAAN water and sewer utility and the National Police.