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Volume 15,
Number 2 |
Also
in this section:  President Torrijos and advisors give a stimulating monologue. Photo by the Presidencia That
stuff about how the financial crisis wouldn't affect Panama? Never
mind...
Torrijos
borrows $1.11 billion
to give to banks as a "stimulus" by Eric Jackson A few short weeks ago, Panama's leading bankers and the government were telling us that this country would not be much affected by the financial crisis that has beset the United States and spread to Europe. On January 21, President Torrijos assembled a crowd of bankers to announce the "Financial Stimulus Program" (PEF). This program has the national government borrowing $1.11 billion from the Inter-American Development Bank, the Andean Promotion Corporation and the National Bank of Panama, to distribute to Panama's private banks. "This isn't a program of subsidies or financial bailouts, it deals with a preventive action that will benefit all Panamanians," the president told the assembled bankers. "This program won't affect the level of public indebtedness," he assured the nation. Torrijos said that he'll announce an advisory board and policies about which private banking interests will get stimulated at some unspecified later date. Presidential financial advisor Horacio Estribí told La Estrella that the banks that receive the stimulus funds would have to invest them in Panama, but the details of how that would work were left unstated. He said that the stimulus was necessary to "reactivate the national economy's liquidity." Panama's banking and business organizations received the news with cautious jubilation. National Private Enterprise Council (CoNEP) president Gaspar García de Paredes was quick to claim dibs on the money for "those sectors that have an impact on the economy" (that is, the wealthy elite). Opposition presidential candidate Ricardo Martinelli, now running well ahead of the PRD's Balbina Herrera, has maintained his silence about the PEF. Some business leaders who are supporting him do not oppose the plan per se but warn that the program must be well managed if it's not to end up as another expensive program that runs up the national debt without accomplishing its purpose. On the left, FRENADESO economic advisor Maribel Gordón panned the plan as a matter of the government increasing the debt by more than $1 billion to put the money "in the hands of usurers and bankers, while it denies a general wage increase for workers, ignores the demands of retirees and pensioners, doesn't have medicines and equipment at its hospitals, transportation is in crisis and they're offering no solutions to the high cost of living." She charged in a FRENADESO TV video that this increase in the national debt is a further "hindrance" to working people trying to meet their needs.
Those assembled found the $1.11
billion most stimulating. Photo by the
Presidencia
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