Panama’s fading investment climate

The Chamber of Commerce, for justified reasons, is concerned about the investment climate in our country, also affected by the worst employment crisis that Panama has suffered in decades. The employers criticize, for example, the high degree of bureaucracy, state intervention in businesses normally reserved for private companies, as well as the excessive discretion of officials, who in some cases cross the limits of their positions. All of this, the businessmen point out, tends to drive away local and international private investment. And to this, we must add the inability of officials who do nothing to reverse the collapse of Panama in the indices that measure the freedom to undertake ventures. In other words, we have the perfect combination for things to deteriorate much more instead of better. The Government has been incompetent in many ways, but what it does not listen to reasons for, and continues to not understand, is that hiring personnel right and left – who in many cases have no functions – only aggravates the situation, since they must resort to credit to defray high and rising operating costs. The way things are going, this country will have to be rebuilt from its foundations.- LA PRENSA, Oct. 3.