News
Thursday 19th December 2024.
December 18, 2024
The Panama Canal delivered direct contributions to the National Treasury on Wednesday for an amount of $2.47 billion for fiscal year 2024, some 74 million dollars less than what was contributed during 2023. These revenues include surpluses, fees per ton of transit and payment for services provided to the State.
Following the approval of the financial statements for the period from October 1, 2023 to September 30, 2024, the Board of Directors of the Panama Canal declared $1,952,410,439.96 as economic surplus from operations.
This amount is added to the $516,403,527.80 generated by rights per ton, as well as B/.1,971,220.22 corresponding to the rate for public services.
The Canal’s contributions to the State during fiscal year 2023 totaled $2,544 million.
The fiscal period was marked by a water crisis, the result of a severe lack of rainfall. In July 2023, the decision was made to reduce transits to 32 vessels per day due to the extension of the dry season and the arrival at that time of the El Niño phenomenon, which extended until March 2024.
Over the following months, the waterway applied new restrictions until reaching 22 ships per day in November 2023.
Under normal conditions, such as those currently in place, the number of ships passing through the Panama Canal daily is between 35 and 36 ships.
The donations were handed over at the Cocolí locks in the province of West Panama, and were attended by the President of the Republic, José Raúl Mulino; the Minister of Canal Affairs, José Ramón Icaza; and the Minister of Economy and Finance, Felipe Chapman.
The director of Innovation and Technological Transformation of the Ministry of Education (Meduca) , Carlos Martínez , submitted his resignation from his position last Friday, December 13.
Martínez was the “liaison unit” with One Laptop per Child (OLPC) , the foundation from which Meduca intends to purchase (directly) 654,000 laptops for more than $241.7 million .
The resignation of the director, who joined Meduca in August 2014, was announced by the institution on Tuesday through its social networks, without mentioning the reasons.
Martínez had been promoted to director during the administration of Lucy Molinar (who took over the reins of Meduca on July 1), after having served as deputy director of the Directorate of Innovation and Technological Transformation . Martínez gained prominence with the controversial multimillion-dollar agreement signed on September 5 between Minister Molinar and the vice president of OLPC, Lylian Peraza . This was due to the fact that the document assigns her the task of submitting quarterly written reports on the progress of the activities agreed with the foundation.
The direct purchase of laptops promoted by Molinar does not have the authorization of the Cabinet Council or the endorsement of the Comptroller General of the Republic, as required by Law 22 of 2006, which regulates public contracts in the country. Despite this, Molinar managed to get the Budget Commission of the National Assembly (AN) to approve the transfer of a budget of $45.4 million, last November.
Molinar told the deputies who are members of that legislative commission that the money would be used to make the first payment to OLPC.
The $45.4 million allocation would be part of the $63 million that Meduca must deliver to OLPC this year to cover the cost of production and transportation of the first batch of laptops: 107,123 for students and 54,000 for teachers in seventh to twelfth grade, according to the document.
The consultation phase for the project that seeks to reform the Social Security Fund (CSS) law ended on Wednesday, December 18, in Metetí, Darién province.
Over the course of 24 days, the deputies of the National Assembly ‘s Committee on Labor, Health and Social Development heard from a total of 485 people out of the 891 who registered to participate in this stage of the debate. That is, 54% of those registered attended these hearings —both in the capital and in the interior of the country.
In the capital, for example, 301 people out of the 622 registered to speak attended. While in the tours to Bocas del Toro, Chiriquí, Veraguas, Herrera, West Panama, Colón and Darién, 185 of the 269 registered to speak attended.
Alaín Cedeño , president of the commission, reported that the deputies will meet this Thursday, December 19, at the Justo Arosemena Palace to compile a summary of the proposals they received during this series of tours.
They will also decide on the date of the first debate and the methodology. Earlier, Cedeño, a deputy from the ruling party Realizing Goals , said that it is unlikely that the project will pass the three debates before the end of the year.
He even indicated that President José Raúl Mulino is very aware that the proposal “needs a lot of debate.”
“At the point we are at, he [Mulino] knows that it is very difficult to hold three debates [before December 31]. I am very clear,” said Cedeño.
Not counting weekends, lawmakers have seven working days left to discuss the document before the end of the year.
Mulino called the National Assembly to extraordinary sessions from November 6 to December 31 to discuss the package of modifications to Law 51 that governs the CSS, a law that will define the future of pensions in the country.
Independent MP Yarelis Rodríguez , vice president of the commission, confirmed that they decided to meet starting this Thursday to analyze all the proposals that have been sent to them.
“It is hard work, it is a job that requires a lot of analysis and a lot of consensus among us, the nine commissioners,” he said.
Colombian authorities have extradited Reynaldo Pérez Palacios, alias Rey, one of the alleged leaders of a criminal network dedicated to drug trafficking dismantled in Operation Ballena, to Panama .
Sources linked to the investigation revealed that Pérez Palacios was arrested last April in the city of Bogotá during a police operation following a red alert issued through Interpol for his location.
According to the Drug Prosecutor’s Office, the criminal network led by Pérez Palacios was responsible for introducing drugs in containers in transit through Panamanian ports and destined for Europe and the United States.
Operation “Ballena” led to the arrest of 18 people. The investigation of this case began after personnel from the National Aeronautical Service (Senan) alerted about the existence of a group of people, national and foreign, dedicated to international drug trafficking and money laundering, led by alias “Rey”.
Through Operation Whale, it was possible to determine the great economic power of this criminal group, which accumulated properties in the country, acquired businesses to give the appearance of legality to money from drug trafficking, and had savings accounts, among others.
The criminal organization was also characterized by the use of encrypted or closed communication through emails, he added.
According to the prosecution, Jaime Powell and Alfredo Martínez Mesa , who have contacts in Spain and Dubai, are also linked to this network . Juan Vicente Blandford is also mentioned in this group .
The group had set up a series of front companies to manage its business operations. These were shell companies, without any physical location, that had operating notices and filed tax returns with the General Revenue Directorate (DGI) to simulate legitimate activities.
They also opened bank accounts to make purchases of fruit, packaging and wood. The aim was to send drugs in containers to countries such as Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain.
For these tasks they kept lawyers, accountants and financial collaborators on their payroll who allowed them to move large sums of money, which they used to purchase real estate, cars and create private interest foundations.
The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) revised downwards its forecast for Panama’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth for 2024, adjusting it to 2.6%, compared to the 3% projected last August.
By 2025, ECLAC estimates that Panama’s GDP will grow by 3.1%, which represents a reduction of 0.2 percentage points compared to figures previously published in the same year.
These adjustments reflect a more cautious assessment of the Panamanian economy, according to the report of this Wednesday, December 18.
At the Latin American level, for 2024 and 2025, the growth rates will be 2.2% and 2.4%, respectively. Although these are higher than the average for the decade 2015-2024 (1%), they will not allow closing the gaps that the economies of the region exhibit with respect to developed economies.
Venezuela (6.2%), Dominican Republic (5.2%), Paraguay (4.2%) and Costa Rica (4.1%) are expected to lead economic growth this year.
In the middle of the table are Nicaragua (3.7%), Honduras (3.6%), Guatemala (3.5%), Brazil (3.2%), Peru (3.1%), Uruguay (3.1%), El Salvador (3%) and the Caribbean islands (2.5%), not counting Guyana, which is experiencing an oil boom.
At the bottom, but still with positive figures, are Chile (2.3%), Bolivia (1.7%), Colombia (1.8%), Mexico (1.4%) and Ecuador (0.8%), while Cuba (-1%), Argentina (-3.2%) and Haiti (-4%) are the only ones that will decrease this year, according to the United Nations agency.
The report details that the region faces what ECLAC has called a low capacity growth trap, coupled with an “international context characterized by high financial and commercial uncertainty, and a slowdown in the growth of the region’s main trading partners.”
To address this “trap,” ECLAC Executive Secretary José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs recommended “increasing the capacity of economies to mobilize financial resources effectively in order to strengthen resilience to economic fluctuations” and “strengthen productive capacity in the medium and long term.”
In this context, the report highlights the low pace of job creation, high levels of informality and significant gender gaps in the region’s labour markets.
In line with low GDP growth, employment in the region is also registering limited growth, at 1.7% in 2024, the lowest recorded in the post-coronavirus pandemic period.
As for informal employment, the average informal employment rate in the region is expected to stand at 46.7%, which would mean a decrease of 0.4 percentage points compared to the rate recorded in 2023.
Despite this slight reduction in informality, significant challenges remain in the region in terms of formalizing employment, which underlines the need to implement effective policies that promote safer and more stable working conditions.