The primary goal for the future potential of the country of Panama should be  to focus on health and education.  While most politicians promise to focus on this and Panama continues to invest heavily in building hospitals, it has failed to educate the population in the English language.

How can you promote Panama to foreigners and expect tourism to thrive when most cannot speak the most widely spoken international language here.  Furthermore, bilingual employees earn better wages.  Costa Rica gets that and is high on the list of countries proficient in the English language.  It is no wonder why Costa Rica has double the tourism number both in visitors and dollars invested.

According to Education First’s English Proficiency Index, Costa Rica and El Salvador have not been able to raise their level of proficiency in the last five years, while Panama and Guatemala, which in 2014 and 2015 did improve their performance, fell in 2016 to the “Very low” level.

The index published each year by Global Education First defines three levels of language proficiency in 72 countries around the world. In the world rankings, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Panama and El Salvador ranked 38, 53, 50 and 63, respectively.

Regarding the results for 2015, Panama deteriorated from “Low” to “Very Low”, while Costa Rica has remained “Low” since 2011, without any improvement.

El Salvador, on the other hand, ranked 63rd worldwide and last place in Latin America, at the “Very Low” level, where it has been since 2012. Only in 2011 did it have the “Low” level.

Compared with other Latin American countries, Guatemala is the third country with the worst level of English, surpassed only by El Salvador and Venezuela.  The level according to the 2016 ranking is “Very low”, and a fall was reported compared to 2015, when it ranked in the “Low” level.