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Volume
14, Number 9 |
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Also
in this section: Business
& Economy Briefs
Torrijos
signs contract to expand PTP oil system
The
president has signed a contract with Petroterminales de Panama, which
calls for a $100 million investment that will expand the company's
system, which includes oil loading and offloading ports and storage
facilities in Puerto Armuelles, Chiriqui and Chiriqui Grande, Bocas
del Toro and a pipeline connecting these facilities. PTP also
maintains the Atlantic-Pacific road that connects Chiriqui and Bocas.
The plan is to expand the storage capacity from 5.8 to 9.2 million
barrels. One possibility that has been under consideration for some
time but has yet to be decided is an arrangement with Venezuela to
renovate the pipeline and make it capable of pumping petroleum from
the Atlantic to the Pacific side, which it can't now do, so as to
aid Venezuelan oil exports to China. Colon
Free Zone business shrinking
According
to El Siglo (whose report is based upon government figures that in
turn come mainly from numbers that businesses submit to it), business
is down at the Colon Free Zone and is about to shrink a lot more in
the short term. In March businesses in the duty-free import-export
zone reported $1.2242 billion in transactions, $153.6 million less
than the same month in 2007 (or 11.1 percent less). The big change,
however, is a reduction in inventories, as reflected in a reduction
in imports. Those were down 21.6
percent as compared to March 2007, and that means that the Free Zone
merchants are expecting business to be slow over the short term.
Exports from the Colon Free Zone were down, but only by 2.3 percent
compared with the same month last year. Economists predict that the
Latin American countries for which the Colon Free Zone serves as a
wholesale emporium and warehousing district will grow at a
substantially slower rate this year than last, but will still be
having one of their better years in recent decades.
Mayday
to be celebrated on Mayday
As
in most of the world, Panamanian workers celebrate Labor Day on May
1. Despite the "bridge day" law to move most holidays to
Mondays or Fridays to make long weekends, Panama will celebrate the
holiday on Thursday, May 1. The Panamanian labor movement may be
relatively week, but it would be quite fruitless for the government
and employers to expect people to report for work on Mayday. As usual
there will be a big Mayday parade that will be broken into several
parts by this country's feuding organized labor factions. The main
contingents will be the PRD-aligned Central
Unitaria de Trabajadores (CUT), essentially the political patronage
hacks of the Federacion Nacional de Servidores Publicos (FENASEP);
the fragmented Consejo Nacional de Trabajadores Organizados (CONATO),
which includes several labor federations and is dominated by company
unions; and the militant leftist CONUSI, the heart of which is the
SUNTRACS construction workers' union.
Wage
talks fail
As
could have been predicted, talks among representatives of employers,
government-aligned labor unions and the Torrijos administration have
failed to agree on a general increase in workers' wages to adjust
standards of living in the face of high inflation. The main results
of this will be political damage to the PRD ahead of next year's
elections and a worse hit to the CONATO alliance of labor
federations, with the genuine unions increasing their internal
opposition to the dominant company unions and the organization as a
whole increasing its reputation for ineffectiveness. Look for the
argument to be the subject of signs and banners in the Mayday parade.
Direct
negotiation for "mega-port"
It
seems that it will be not only an opaque deal, but not nearly so
"mega" as originally conceived. After three years of failed
bidding processes, the government has decided to pursue direct
negotiations with two companies to grant a concession worth about
$600 million to develop a seaport on a landfill to be installed near
the former US Navy housing area at Farfan, adjacent to the former
Howard Air Force Base. The companies with which it is negotiating are
China's partly state-owned COSCO and the US-based Ports
America Group. Howard
is supposed to become a duty-free trade and light manufacturing area
and an airport mostly for freight, and there would be some synergy
with a seaport next door. However, the problem is that to shift
containers over to Panama's multimodal rail system that serves the
Pacific side port of Balboa and the Colon Free Zone and ports of
Cristobal, Manzanillo International Terminal and Colon Container
Terminal, they would have to be trucked over the Bridge of the
Americas, a limiting bottleneck. That's the main physical fact behind
the failure to find bidders for a port on the scale the government
had envisioned. Opposition presidential candidate Ricardo Martinelli
is criticizing the direct negotiations idea, saying that with a
contract of this size that creates too much of an opportunity for
corruption. Prices
for building materials way up
The
Panamanian Chamber of Construction, the builders' industry group,
estimates that in the past year the prices of building materials have
gone up by an average of 35 percent. It's higher for key components
like cement and rebar. Labor costs are also up, by about 10 to 15
percent. That means that even though sales have slowed down in many
segments of the housing industry, the cost of a new home is still
going up. Torrijos
wants to limit the next administration's debt
Panama's
public debt is at record levels in absolute terms, but because much
of it is "off the books" --- and that will become a
particularly more significant factor with the Panama Canal Authority
for the canal expansion job --- it is argued that as a percentage of
Gross Domestic Product the debt, which the government estimates at
about 40 percent of annual GDP (while others put the number closer to
55 percent) is not particularly severe. (International bond rating
agencies, by and large, don't buy the government's claims.) The debt
is serious enough, however, for the PRD administration and National
Assembly to be passing a law that will require the government that
takes office in September of 2009 to keep budget deficits within
strict levels. There was such a law when the Torrijos administration
took office, but it was amended to allow higher debt.
Talks
for Panama-Mexico free trade pact
With
the US-Panama free trade agreement in congressional limbo, the
Torrijos administration is attempting to cut NAFTA-style deals with
Canada and Mexico. This it was reported in several dailies in Panama
and Mexico that preparatory talks for negotiations between Mexico and
Panama toward this end are underway.
Now
that traffic gridlock is in the works
Any
urban planner worth his or her salt will tell you that the building
boom in Punta Pacifica and nearby areas of the corregimiento of San
Francisco is unsupported by a viable traffic system or sufficient
water, sewer or electrical utilities. After the Balbina Herrera years
when virtually all building projects got permits despite these
objections, she's no longer at the Housing Ministry (MIVI) and the
policy has changed. Now MIVI says it's not accepting any more
applications for land use changes that imply greater population
density in San Francisco.
Comarca
authorities want Peace Corps to leave
The
caciques in the Ngobe-Bugle Comarca have asked the US Peace Corps to
leave. The Peace Corps has been working in the semi-autonomous
indigenous region under a five-year agreement that's about to expire,
and the elected leaders say that while volunteers may have learned
things about the local languages and cultures, the people of the
comarca have received little benefit from the arrangement.
"Expat
leader" and anti-tax guy gets 10 years
The
international headlines paid more attention to his follower Wesley
Snipes receiving a three-year prison sentence. Eddie Ray Kahn, who
used to be one of the organizers of a gringo expat social group here,
and who through his Guiding Light of God Ministries practiced weird
casino prayers and dispensed even weirder US tax advice, was Snipes's
co-defendant and he got 10 years. Kahn, who had been convicted for
this sort of thing before, disputed the court's jurisdiction and
boycotted his trial. Most of the Americans who promoted or followed
Kahn when he was down here --- essentially a right-wing segment of
the community --- now deny having had anything to do with him.
Nandwanis
allege it's a crime for a judge to demand the books
The
major Fotokina bankruptcy fraud case drags on in both civil and
criminal litigation. The defendants, members of the extended Nandwani
family, have via their lawyers and with either the incompetence or
complicity of folks in the justice system stalled the criminal
aspects of the case to the point that it's close to being barred by
the statute of limitations. In the civil case, circuit court judge Jorge
Isaac Escobar set a deadline for the defendants to produce Fotokina's
books, but instead of producing them, the Nandwanis' lawyers filed a
criminal charge against Escobar, alleging that it's an abuse of
authority for a judge in a civil bankruptcy matter to demand
production of records.
Cash
giveaway has 2.7 percent fraud rate
The
Red de Oportunidades program, wherein the president or other top
officials go to desperately poor communities, give speeches vilifying
the opposition and pass out envelopes containing $35 in exchange for
parents promising to keep their kids in school and make sure they get
their vaccinations, serves some 54,000 families, according to
Minister of Social Development María
Roquebert León. She told El Panama America that some 1,500
ineligible people, including women who had government jobs, had been
cut off the program.
Bridge
of the Americas work
Traffic
is kind of a pain on the Bridge of the Americas and will be for
several months. Many cables, bolts and girders that have been in
place since the bridge opened in 1962 and are now showing signs of
wear will be replaced, and the broken-up road surface will be fixed.
The plan is to keep all lanes open during rush hours and do most of
the work between 9 p.m. and 4 a.m. in order to reduce traffic
disruptions. New
road slides down the hill
A
new blacktop road between the Herrera communities of Los Pozos and El
Salitre, finished five months ago, was supposed to solve a lot of
transportation headaches. Very briefly, it did. However, the first
full rainy season after the $3.8 million road's opening had yet to
begin when parts of it --- including an entire lane of the two-lane
structure in one place --- crumbled and slid down a steep hill. The
Ministry of Public Works, which approved the job by Concor, SA, told
La Prensa that it will insist upon its warranty and make the company
fix the road at its expense.
Bus
driver drug tests net 19 positives
In
the last two weeks the Transito cops have been setting up checkpoints
at bus stops around the city and subjecting the bus drivers to drug
tests. Of about 400 drivers tested, 19 have tested positive and had
their licenses suspended. The drivers are being given a chance to go
through a rehabilitation program and get their licenses back.
Bus
stops shutting down late at night
It's
a process that has been taking place for a long time without any
public acknowledgment, but as crimes at bus stops and on buses at
night have increased some of the Panama City metro area bus driver
syndicates are openly reducing their hours of operation along certain
routes. Now, for example, one can't get a bus in Pedregal after 10 at
night and bus driver leader Dionel
Broce told La Prensa
that this is because the drivers don't think that it's worth the risk
of being assaulted to work these hours.
Cops
shut busy bus stop
It
was one of the city's busiest bus stops, but also a traffic
nightmare. So now Transito isn't letting buses stop on Via
España
near the Templo
Hossana, which is making much of the large congregation at that
Evangelical church walk a block or so out of their way to attend
activities there.
Anti-smoking
law in effect
Notwithstanding
the protests of bar, restaurant and hotel owners and of course the
tobacco companies, on April 24 a new law that prohibits smoking in
most enclosed spaces went into effect. The law also bans virtually
all tobacco advertising and raises taxes on tobacco products.
IDAAN
blames disease outbreak on electrical outage
Hundreds
of Changuinola district residents got sick with water-borne diseases
after drinking from taps supplied by the government's IDAAN water and
sewer utility, but IDAAN management is blaming it on the electric
company. The claim is that a power outage damaged the machine that
chlorinates the water supply in that part of Bocas del Toro province.
But then, if the water treatment system was on the blink, it would
have been nice if IDAAN had warned the public that they'd have to
boil their tap water before drinking it.
These briefs were compiled on April 25 Also
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