A $1 billion airport boondoggle

What begins badly does not end well, and that is precisely what has happened with the new Tocumen terminal, a work that Odebrecht built for an exorbitant amount, typical of all the projects from which it took money to pay bribes to servers public of Panama and abroad. The terminal should have been delivered years ago, but it has been granted so many addenda to the contract that, if there is no halt, it will end up delivering it when the planes will go electric. The latest modification to the contract gave it a five-month delivery period that ends precisely this month. The work did not pass a technical inspection, in which 10,547 situations were discovered that the company must correct before delivering the project, and which entail an outlay of $ 9.7 million for Odebrecht. But Odebrecht has already announced that, for the umpteenth time, they will not be able to meet the deadline. So the patience ran out: Tocumen, SA could administratively resolve the contract, a decision that comes years late, although it is better late than never. It is an investment of almost $1, billion, whose administration has been chaotic and irresponsible on the part of all the governments that took part in the project. LA PRENSA, Sep.17.