I mean, can you imagine that, a mere 8.4 percent!!!! That is a growth rate most nations would love to announce as opposed to zero for Russia, and a pittance for most other so called first world countries. Come on Reuters, how about a positive note rather than posting a stalled canal project under the headline. Wake up, the project is underway and will propel Panama even further and faster than ever. Look up Quantum leap.
(Reuters) – Panama’s economy slowed in 2013 after two straight years of double-digit growth, but remained one of Latin America’s fastest expanding economies thanks to heavy government infrastructure spending, official data showed on Thursday.
Panama’s economic activity rose 8.4 percent last year compared to a downwardly revised 10.2 percent in 2012, the government statistics agency said, figures in line with what the finance ministry had projected for the year.
The easing in growth comes as investments in large-scale infrastructure projects, including the $5.25 billion expansion of the Panama Canal, draw to a close.
The Central American country escaped the worst of the global recession, expanding at an average rate of 8 percent over the past six years and notching double-digit growth in 2011 and 2012.
Much of Panama’s growth is credited to the public infrastructure spending, including the construction of the trademark canal’s third lane and Central America’s first metro.
President Ricardo Martinelli, whose term ends in May, has also poured money into new roads and hospitals and cleaning of Panama Bay, boosting the construction industry’s growth by 30 percent in 2013.
The spending has created a budget deficit of 2.7 percent of GDP, Finance Minister Frank De Lima said, which some analysts find worrying given the strong growth the country has had.
Growth has also been lifted by construction and development of a $6.2 billion copper mine on Panama’s Atlantic coast, which helped expand the mining industry by nearly a third last year.
The mine is expected to become one of the world’s biggest open-pit copper developments and Panama’s biggest source of exports, and its first shipments are due in 2016, according to Minera Panama, a subsidiary of Canada’s First Quantum Minerals Ltd.
Still, Panama’s overall growth was cooled by the worldwide economic slowdown, which dulled trade through the canal and ports.
A delay in the waterway’s expansion, which is now projected to finish by December 2015, also persuaded some shippers such as Danish oil and shipping group A.P. Moller-Maersk to use alternative routes from Asia like the Suez Canal, which fits bigger ships carrying more goods cheaply.
Panama’s $33.6 billion economy has also been affected by a dispute with two of its biggest trading partners, Colombia and Venezuela, which disrupted Panama’s Colon Free Trade Zone, the world’s largest duty-free area after Hong Kong.
Venezuelan traders owe the free trade zone about $1.2 billion because of difficulties exchanging the Venezuelan bolivar for dollars. Meanwhile, Colombia has imposed additional surcharges on importing items such as clothes and shoes.
Panama’s Finance Ministry has switched to using 2007 base rates instead of 1996, modifying economic back data.
(Reporting by Lomi Kriel; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli)
The only way that I know that the government can be cleaning up the bay of Panama is by dredging it and the only way I know you can do this is by using boats designed to do the dredging. I live on Avenida Balboa and look out at the bay everyday so I think I would notice if there were several boats go back and forth dredging the bottom. I assure you that there have been none. I have read elsewhere that the president said the bay cleanup is 83% complete. I call BS on that. Maybe they have completed 83% out the building of sewer treatment but cleaning the bay to me means ……..cleaning the bay. Also as I write this my building is without water and has been off and on for the 6 years I have lived here and this is a very common occurrence all over Panama. So when I read about the good president pouring big bucks into infrastructure I again call BS. What is happening is unchecked building to take advantage of the people fleeing from the economic collapse and/or oppression of their own country and government. So if infrastructure means building new buildings and airports then the statement in this article is true but to me the word infrastructure includes your basic things like electricity and water and these systems are collapsing under the strain of all this new construction that is being done with no inspections or quality control and no upgrades to the “infrastructure” until it is too late and even then it is just a patch job (i.e. even when this building has water the consumption is greater than the amount of water supplied to the building so the water is cut off at different times of the day or night to allow the tanks to refill.)
I realize that I chose to live here and that I am free to leave at anytime so no need to go there. Panama is a beautiful country but the government is corrupt just as any country in the world. I do fell freer here than I did in my native country so I continue to wait and see if the problems that exist will eventually be fixed but I would for once like to read an truthful article about Panama and the government and not one based on a government press release.
There are too many media outlets chasing too few news-worthy stories.
Many in the media try to stay alive by making mountains out of molehills, or even inventing their own facts.
So we end up with near-fantasy articles like the one above (many global warming articles and ‘reports’ are in this category too.)