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business & economy
Also in this section:
Arrocha workers take their pay dispute to the street
Business & Economy Briefs
Torrijos hires new Washington lobbyists Duh, now Martín! The Republicans no longer control the US Congress and George W. Bush's good buddy Raúl Romero and the GOP-aligned Washington Group lobbying firm can't muster the votes for the US-Panama Free Trade Agreements passage in the US House of Representatives. So La Prensa's Betty Brannan Jaén reports from Washington that the Torrijos administration, which pays $26,500 a month to Romero and $25,000 a month to The Washington Group, signed a contract to pay $15,000 per month to the Democrat-aligned lobbying firm Parven, Pomper & Schuyler. Due to the time constraints imposed by the congressional schedule, negotiators for the Torrijos and Bush administrations are close to the end of the time when it would be possible to renegotiate a labor standards section and other provisions in order to make the deal palatable to House Democrats.
Bocas runs dry The Bocas Town reservoir has just about dried up, and that has left most residents of the town and Isla Carenero, which also depends on the reservoir, has been without water for weeks. That has driven away many tourists and sent some residents fleeing. At the Bocas airport, however, there are signs announcing that the Torrijos administration is rehabilitating the sewage systems and fixing the road in town.
Tourism up La Prensa reports, using the Comptroller General as a source, that in January of this year some 136,000 visitors entered Panama, up some 12.5 percent over the same month of 2006. The amount of money they spent was up 14.35 percent, but when adjusted for inflation and figured per person didn't really vary that much.
ACP administrative shuffle Because Canal Affairs Minister Ricaurte Vásquez dropped his unpaid second job at the Panama Canal Authority (ACP), that of deputy administrator, there has been musical chairs of sort in the second and third tiers of the authority's management. The new deputy administrator is José Barrios Ng, who came to the ACP as financial director after a corporate career with Cable & Wireless and Cerveceria Nacional. Manuel Benítez, who held the number two spot temporarily after Vásquez stepped down, is now head of Operations. The director of Engineering and Project Administration post was split in two and given to two rabiblancos, Augustín Arias Chiari and Jorge Quijano. Estéban Sáenz is the new director of Environment, Water and Energy, Álvaro Cabal is the legal director, Fernán Molinos is head of corporate communications, Francisco Loaiza is the human resources director and Ana María de Chiquilani is the office manager at the Administration building.
Editor's note: In a previous edition it was incorrectly implied that Ricaurte Vásquez drew a double salary for serving both as Minister of Canal Affairs and deputy administrator of the Panama Canal. Actually, he only got his minister's salary for that anomalous position, in which he was canal administrator Alberto Alemán Zubieta's boss and subordinate.
Now if they ever get started... Although there are some interesting engineering problems and various ways to go about the job, the cleaning of the terribly polluted Panama Bay is actually pretty simple from the technical point of view. You stop dumping sewage into the bay, by rebuilding or in some areas building for the first time a system of sanitary sewers, and then treat the sewage that's collected instead of just dumping it raw into the bay. The politics? There the problem becomes a Byzantine maze about how to make sure the right pockets are lined and that the wrong politicians don't get credit for doing something positive. The money? It's expensive, but loans for the job have been on offer for many years. Part of the latter part of the puzzle was put into place when Japan's Deputy Finance Minister Kazunori Tanaka paid a visit to Panama to catch part of the mayor's Panama 500 conference and visit with officials of the national government: the Japanese Bank for International Cooperation will loan $160 million toward the more than $1 billion needed to clean the bay. Most of the rest of the money is pledged by the Inter-American Development Bank and other international lenders.
Waterfront landfill plan advances The idea of ICA extending the Corredor Sur around Punta Paitilla and over to the Casco Viejo, then tunnelling under that historic area and enclosing the waterfront off Santa Ana and El Chorrillo is out. A lesser plan to fill in a fringe along the beach between Casco Viejo and Punta Paitilla appears to have all the approvals from the municipal and national authorities. As presented it would entail a wider Avenida Balboa, new parks along the bay, the relocation of the Hotel Miramar and Club de Yates y Pesca marinas but not a mad scramble to build new highrises on the landfill. (Once the land is filled in, however, the temptation for developers would be eternal and the line-up of politicians would shift every few years and feed that temptation.)
Toro reconsiders privatization Former President Ernesto Pérez Balladares, now in a battle with President Torrijos's followers and other party factions for control of the ruling PRD and the party's 2009 presidential nomination, says that the privatization the old IRHE electric utility that took place under his administration has not gone as intended. In remarks to El Panama America he said that the government ought to call the players in the industry to sit at a table for conversations about the subject and that it might be best for the country if the state bought back or renationalized shares in the private companies that generate and distribute electricity. The power lines are still owned by a state-owned company, ETESA, and the public-owned Panama Canal Authority is a small player in the electricity generating business.
PYCSA receiver warns about road contract Can a company that's in receivership just give away its principal unencumbered asset without dealing with the receiver? The basic law school axiom, just about everywhere, under every legal system, is "no." But the procedural gymnastics by which the Brazilian construction company Norberto Odebrecht SA got the concession for the Madden to Colon autopista contract was a purported 1994 addendum to the PYCSA contract with the government that broke the Corredor Norte and Panama to Colon autopista concession into several parts and provided that PYCSA could sell any part of it provided the government agreed. This addendum, curiously, was published only in March of 2007, AFTER Odebrecht obtained the concession, according to company versions without paying anything to the insolvent PYCSA. So Kevin Harrington, the court-appointed receiver for PYCSA, has issued a warning to all bankers, governments and people who may be doing business with Odebrecht that "the right to build the Madden to Colon stretch is the only unencumbered asset of PYCSA Panama SA that's available to honor the debts of the Patronato del Parque Natural Metropolitano... and now it has been expropriated without process of law." The warning is likely a prelude to a suit against Odebrecht, the government or both in search of the payments that PYCSA was supposed to make for taking part of the park for its toll road. The park is only one of PYCSA's many unpaid creditors who stand to be cheated in the unusual asset transfer.
World Bank directs attention to campesinos The World Bank, even some of its own officials admit, has never been very good at promoting agricultural development that benefits small farmers in tropical countries. But they keep trying. The latest attempt is a $39.4 million program directed at Los Santos, Herrera and Veraguas provinces. Part of it is to help some 5,000 small farmers draw up business plans and establish relationships with food processing or exporting companies. Another part of the program is a series of local resource conservation projects that would strengthen the Atlantic Mesoamerican Biological Corridor effort by replanting or preserving forests and managing water resources upon which much wildlife depends. Whether it's just another loan for the government to fritter away and pay back, or whether the farmers or the processors and exporters are to be the main beneficiaries, or whether conservation will become a cover for the transfer of land and water resources and to whom, are all questions that could have various answers within the framework of what the bank describes.
University lowers entry standards, still gets fewer students The University of Panama, which last year added an English language proficiency requirement for new students and then discovered that many of the English teachers that prospective students had in high school barely speak English themselves, has had to ease up on the minimum test scores to get into the school. Still, this year is shaping up to have the smallest freshman class in many years. During the Moscoso administration the requirement of studying a second language at all levels of education was mandated by law. The law doesn't require that it be English, but that's the most popular second language and the most useful in many fields and also, since this country's ruling elite tend to educate their kids in English, the way that the shrinking pool of middle class jobs can be restricted to the offspring of the wealthy families whom this country's political elites, including PRD university rector Gustavo García de Paredes's political patronage machine, effectively represent. Thus you don't get into the University of Panama by showing proficiency in French or Kuna rather than English.
Job safety street protests After the death of a construction worker in a five-story fall at an apartment tower going up along Costa del Este, followed a few days later by the deaths of two other workers from inhaling toxic sewer gas while cleaning a drain, the SUNTRACS construction workers union has been staging a series of peaceful demonstrations to demand better enforcement of workplace safety standards. The protests have been loud but not disruptive, but the union warns that it will take strike actions if necessary to defend workers' interests in job safety. So far this year 10 construction workers have died in workplace accidents.
Proposed cement plant draws complaints What's the latest cause for environmentalists and neighbors to question the National Environmental Authority's (ANAM's) wisdom and honesty? The authority has approved the location of a cement plant at the former Rodman Naval Station, where winds would at various times of the year carry its dust over Cerro Ancon National Park, residential areas in Balboa, Diablo and El Chorrillo, tourist developments and marinas along the Amador Causeway and the western side of the canal, and the Port of Balboa where a lot of people would be breathing in the particles on the job. A port facility adjacent to the cement plant for which a Singaporean company has been granted a concession might be the long term beneficiary, and the plant would be in a position to underbid competitors for the delivery of cement to the construction site for the new Pacific side locks. This particular assault on the urban environment was not disclosed during the debate on the Panama Canal expansion proposal.
Colon Free Zone expands into Fort Davis The Davis Export Processing Zone that the Pérez Balladares administration promised us would create tens of thousands of jobs was a dud, but not that fenced area of the former Fort Davis is going to be taken up by the Colon Free Zone's expansion. The Free Zone doesn't have much space to expand in its current location, but there are still a lot of businesses that want to get into the duty-free import-export zone. Thus, a satellite branch a few miles down the road at Davis.
Taiwan to build middle class housing Taiwan, long Panama's biggest foreign aid benefactor, has announced that it will build 4,500 houses for middle class families, which will cost about $20,000 each in the Panama City metro area. It's an investment of about $50 million and construction should get underway after the heavy rains subside at the end of this year. Panama City has a glut of upper-end housing, which draws more speculators than prospective homeowners as purchasers, and a few public housing projects underway for the poor, but very little for working people.
RP off of Russia's blacklist For a number of years the Russian Federation has restricted banking ties and financial services involving Panama, because this country's banking and corporate secrecy laws provide shields behind which Russians can evade tax collectors. However, as part of a deal to get Panama's vote to allow Russia into the World Trade Organization, Mr. Putin's government has promised to lift these restrictions.
Also in this section:
Jailed over a contract dispute: Bobby Hammond's
and Tammy Pace's story
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