OPINION: After the ribbon cutting comes the reckoning

From 2016 to date, the subsidy for the fares of users of the Panama Metro has been$120 million. The successful operation of line 1 has exceeded all forecasts, but It has also evidenced the lack of a transport service management strategy aimed at covering its costs. The next Metro line will bring new users and will need more subsidies. Although the Inter- American Development Bank is working with the Metro and Metro Bus operators to coordinate an integrated tariff, it is easy to predict that political pressure will seek to avoid reasonable adjustment of the Metro fares, condemning it  to a permanent subsidy and leaving it without the ability to create reserves to face future expenses. That’s the genetics of state megaprojects, which after the cutting of ribbons, corresponds to in some years, the increasingly meager portfolio of public finances, to defray the expenses of operation and maintenance of the fleet of Metro trains and wagons … will the country have the fiscal capacity to do so? … LA PRENSA, Sep. 11