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Volume
14, Number 8 |
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Also
in this section: Business
& Economy Briefs
Belgians get dredging contract A
consortium headed by Dredging
Internacional, a Belgian company, has won the contract to do the
Pacific side dredging for the Panama Canal expansion project. It's a
$177,500,677 job, won in bidding against two other companies.
$2 million security company heist The
union-busting Group
4 Securicor, which in 2007 changed its corporate name and stripped
its employees of their union representation and accrued seniority and
benefits, got what can ordinarily be expected under such
circumstances. On the night of March 23 it was assaulted by three
robbers who were almost certainly were working with inside
information, and some $2 million was stolen from the vault of its El
Cangrejo headquarters. The company provides security at the US and UK
embassies.
Accord with rice farmers After
militant highway blockade protests by the nation's rice farmers, the
Torrijos administration and farm groups have agreed that the farmers
will plant at least 60,000 hectares of rice this year and if they
can't sell this amount on the open market the government will buy
their production and distribute it via the government's Compita brand
at subsidized prices for consumers.
Free trade with Guatemala On
March 26 Panama and Guatemala signed a free trade agreement with
Guatemala during a visit by the latter's President Álvaro
Colom. Later that day the Cabinet Council approved it and
sent
it on to the National Assembly for a ratification vote. It was
presented to the legislature on April 2 and it's expected to be
passed with little or no opposition. Trade between Panama and
Guatemala amounted to about $120 million last year, which was about
15 percent more than in 2006. Salient points of the deal include
Guatemala's duty-free imports of most products made in third
countries but marketed through the Colon Free Zone and a bilateral
maritime commerce agreement. Panama will likely see more foods
processed in Guatemala and light manufactured goods made in
Guatemala, while Guatemalans will probably eat more Panamanian
seafood.
NOW they say... Three
former directors of the now defunct Interoceanic Regional Authority
(ARI) have told La Prensa that the government should review and
renegotiate the concessions that they awarded to eight businesses
that set up shop on the former Fort Amador and haven't been paying as
agreed. The combined debt of these businesses is in excess of $18
million, with most of itn ($11.9 million) having been run up by Jean
Figali's Grupo F. Nicolas Ardito Barletta (who ran ARI in the Pérez
Balladares administration), Alfredo Arias (Mireya Moscoso's ARI
director) and Julio Ross (the last director, under Martín
Torrijos) are blaming administrative inefficiency for the problem.
ARI granted a number of concessions to those who lied about their
ability to comply with contracts they made, and often those who were
allowed to do this were people with strong political connections. The
13 surviving concessionaires --- only five of which are current in
their payments --- do not include a number of concession winners who
were unable to ever open their proposed businesses on Amador and saw
their contracts rescinded. All this happened despite an ARI staff
that included dozens of lawyers, whose job was to avoid such
deceptions. The three ex-directors are not using words like
"foreclose," "rescind" or "seize," and
that's quite telling. Allowing competitors who were not dishonest
with ARI a chance to take over those concessions at the lower rates?
That sort of market solution is not contemplated by the three
ex-directors, even though they purported to be champions of market
economics during their shifts at ARI.
Declining consumer confidence One
can question credentials or methodology, but it's a no-brainer. El
Panama America reports, based on a study by the GFK
Marketing Group, which does these monthly survey of Panamanian
consumers' confidence in the economy, that consumer confidence is
down to 95.8 points in early April, from 102.2 in early March and
105.9 in February. The tipping point between general optimism and
overall pessimism by this scale, which measures whether people think
they'll be able to save money, is 100. Inflation is the big reason
for the decline, but perceived deterioration of the public health
care system and utility services are also cited factors for public
pessimism.
$32 million extra election year spending binge Now
that campaigning for the 2009 elections is in full swing, the
PRD-controlled administration and legislature are planning to spend
more on the party activists. The Cabinet Council has approved $32
million in supplemental government spending this year, with $12.9
million of that going to the Ministry of the Presidency for Social
Investment Fund projects and $4.5 million for the legislature to
expand its payroll. The National Police get more than $4.5 million,
mainly to hire an extra 1,000 cops, and $6.9 million will go for
prison construction. There will also be a new wing on the Policlinica Dr. Blas Gomez
Chetro in
Arraijan, money to pay debts for the SENACYT technology directorate
and vacation pay for various public officials. Much of the money is
clearly destined for temporary jobs for PRD wardheelers, to motivate
them to work in the campaign, and opposition political figures did
not waste any time to say that.
Government may sell utility shares When
the Pérez
Balladares administration privatized the nation's phone and electric
utilities, the government retained 49 percent of the shares in the
privatized utilities. Now with a record debt, some hugely expensive
projects underway, a credit rating that's not as good as it had
predicted and about to go on an election year spending binge, the
Torrijos administration could use some extra cash and has thus hired
a consultant to come up with appraised values for the government's
stakes in Cable & Wireless Panama, and the local subsidiaries
of
Union Fenosa and Elektra Noreste.
La Estrella reports that this is being done with a view toward the
possible sale of these shares.
$43 grand for Cabinet Room lamps El
Panama America reports that the room in the Palacio de las Garzas
where the Cabinet Council has new lamps --- to the tune of $43,000.
The biggest-ticket item is a $19,000 crystal chandelier.
National Oncology Institute out of medicine Citing
a lack of budget, leukemia patients and others who need anti-cancer
drugs have been told that the pharmacy at the Instituto
Oncologico Nacional is out of the medicines they need. On April 1 the
hospital's director, Jorge Lasso de la Vega, acknowledged to La
Prensa that this had been the case for three weeks but said that the
problem was getting resolved.
Teck retreats from Petaquilla Richard
Fifer's Petaquilla mining project has suffered a major blow with the
April 11 announcement by Canada-based mining giant Teck Cominco that
it's pulling back from its support of the development of a copper
mine. Teck, which had been funding the development of the copper
project --- which has been spun off as a separate effort from
Petaquilla's gold mine --- has withdrawn that funding and arranged
for another Canadian company, Inmet, to take over that funding. Both
Inmet and Petaquilla shares plunged on the news, the former 2.21
percent and the latter 7.42 percent between the announcement and the
day's close. The joint Inmet / Teck announcement said that "Inmet
Mining and Teck Cominco have agreed that on an interim basis Inmet
Mining will provide additional personnel to an affiliate of Teck
Cominco that will act as operator of the project, and will fund
project expenditures instead of Teck Cominco," and the
Petaquilla boosters characterized it as an advance for the project,
but investors saw it as the big backer cutting and running. Teck,
however, left a decision about whether to definitively cut its ties
to the project until September 30, 2009. That would be after the next
administration takes power and it would be possible to determine if
Fifer has any influence with it.
US court refuses extradition in Fotokina case Ram
Choithram Nandwani, allegedly one of the principals in a
multimillion-dollar bankruptcy fraud by the defunct Grupo Fotokina,
won't be sent to Panama to face charges. A US federal court in Miami
has held that as the alleged acts --- falsification of books to make
it appear that Fotokina was doing much more business than it actually
was in order to get bank loans, unjustified transfers of assets to
other persons or companies in anticipation of a declaration of
bankruptcy and so on --- were said to have happened in 2002 or
earlier and thus extradition was barred by the statute of
limitations. There is a reasonable chance that some current or former
judges and prosecutors here in Panama may be called to account for
the delays that allowed the case to drag along for years and allow
this to happen.
Dairy
processors accused of price fixing The
Consumer Protection and Free Competition Authority is taking four
dairy processing companies, Nestle
Panama, Industrias Lacteas, Sociedad de Alimentos de Primera and
Refrescos Nacionales, to court for alleged price fixing. The
companies set uniform prices that they pay to all dairy farmers, and
the authority says that's an illegal monopolistic practice.
No longer need a visa to visit Mexico Mexico,
hoping to promote its tourism and business ties with Panama, has
eliminated the requirement for Panamanians to obtain a visa for
tourist and business visits to that country. Prior to the change it
had been issuing 40 to 90 visas per day to Panamanians, depending on
the season. Panama and Mexico are holding talks aimed at a bilateral
free trade agreement.
Bus drivers lose licenses over positive drug tests Transito
recently pulled surprise drug tests on 225 metro area bus drivers,
and the result is that four of them have had their drivers' licenses
indefinitely suspended. The government warns that more tests and
suspensions are coming.
100 teachers investigated for fake degrees The
anti-corruption prosecutor is investigating at least 100 public
school teachers who got better teaching assignments by presenting
fake graduate degrees from the Specialized University of the Americas
(UDELAS, the school
founded by
President Torrijos's aunt Berta). Meanwhile the rector of the
University of Panama continues with a fake doctorate and a La Prensa
investigation found that at least a dozen legislators misrepresented
their academic credentials on their pages of the National Assembly's
website.
School repair woes On the first day
of the school
year, it appeared that 2008 was off to a better start than most
previous academic years were, at least judging from the lower number of
schools deemed unfit for use. However, it turned out that the Ministry
of Education was expecting schools faculty and students to use
buildings in which work to remove fiberglass from the ceilings was
incomplete and the irritating substance was falling from above, or
schools without water or electricity or backed-up sewage drains, or
classrooms without furniture, or shops and labs without tools and
equipment. Students, teachers, parents and often combinations of these
quickly shut down a number of the schools and the excuses from on high
were giving the government some exceptionally bad press. As in
vocational high schools not having tools or materials, and it turning
out that these were in the possession of the
Instituto
Nacional de Formación Profesional y Capacitación
para
el Desarrollo Humano (INADEH), whose administration said that the
necessities of a shop class couldn't be turned over to the schools for
which they were intended because there was no guarantee that they would
be properly cared for. As in New science, biology and physics labs at
Colegio Venancio Fenosa in Chepo, but without the materials needed to
use these labs and regional education director Anabella
Yepez
sneering at students who walked out in protest for their ingratitude.
Education Minister Belgis Castro, who began his career in public life
as a psychologist for Manuel Antonio Noriega's G-2 torture and
intelligence unit, is expected to step down to run for elected office,
but in the meantime Vice President Samuel Lewis Navarro (who is also
Foreign Minister) was given the task of overseeing the correction of
problems with school facilities, with Castro reporting to him rather
than the president.
Water riot On
April 1 neither a group of about 200 Chilibre resident nor the
National Police riot squad were fooling around. Although they live
near the metro area's main water purification plant, thousands of
people in Chilibre were without water in their taps, some for more
than three weeks, and the residents began a blockade on the
Transistmica early in the morning. After a three-hour standoff the
riot police moved in with clubs and tear gas, beating up both adults
and minors and making nine arrests to reopen the road that connects
Panama and Colon. The IDAAN water and sewer utility promised that the
water would be back on in a couple of days.
Was it that they neglected the payoff? Panama's
banking and securities regulatory institutions knowingly tolerate
convicted foreign criminals engaging in the unlicensed offer of
banking or investment services --- for some reason for which we can
only guess. However, the Banking Superintendent has issued a warning
about a company that goes by the name Finanzas
Forex and is registered here under the name Evolution Market Group.
It's a sales pyramid, in which people pay their membership fee to get
into a foreign currency trading organization and are supposed to get
a percentage of the membership fees of those whom it recruits into
the scheme, and investors are promised a 12 to 100 percent monthly
return on investment. This is not much different from other schemes
that the government has not only tolerated but encouraged in various
ways. However, the government of Spain has an ongoing criminal
investigation of this particular scam and that may have prompted some
belated government action here.
Also
in this section: News |
Economy
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Opinion |
Lifestyle |
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©
2008 by Eric Jackson email: editor@thepanamanews.com or e_l_jackson_malo@yahoo.com Mailing
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