Business organizations seek action after 4 months of talks

After working for more than four months, coordinating dozens of meetings between more than 125 businessmen and officials, and approving 43 of an expanded total of 51 proposals for the country’s economic reactivation as a result of the pandemic, the National Council of Private Enterprise ( Conep) is waiting for the Government to convene a monitoring commission to analyze and promote the agreements reached.

“It is urgent that we move forward, but the government has not given us a date for when the call for follow-up will be made,” Rubén Castillo, president of Conep, told La Prensa.

The urgency that Castillo speaks of is generated by the closure of companies that are reported, in addition to the levels of unemployment, with 220,000unemployed in the country, and another 677,000 informal workers, which reflects the deterioration that the economy has suffered

Since April 2021, businessmen have warned of the labor crisis, due to confinement and the pandemic, for which it was necessary to identify and implement dynamic proposals that would affect the gross domestic product (GDP), but particularly in reactivating jobs.

Conep and Apede (Panama Association of Business Execs) warn that it is urgent to evaluate the reactivation plan

They delivered to President Laurentino Cortizo the document that contains the proposals for economic reactivation, as a result of the work that the high-level public-private commission had done.

Second step
Now the problem is the second step, which is follow-up, but this stage shows stagnation, Castillo said.

“The point is that there is an internal issue in the Secretariat of Goals, which is now the control tower in the Presidency, where all the agreements are being evaluated. They have said that they are going to make a call to reactivate the commission for monitoring each of the points. But it seems to us that it is time for this to move forward, and for it to move forward quickly”.

Elisa Suárez de Gómez, president of the Apede, supports Castillo’s call and warns that there is much concern about the number of companies that will not withstand the lethal effects of Covid-19 on the economy.

In this sense, it refers to the statistics compiled last week by the National Competitiveness Center (CNC), which reflect that in 2020 some 18,965 companies canceled their operation notice, while in 2021 cancellations totaled 24,000

The CNC data, based on the statistics of Panama Emprende, may include cancellations of notice of operations due to the definitive closure of a company, but may also include cancellations due to other factors such as mergers, purchases, or entrepreneurs who left their projects to return to work in a company.

Suárez warns that the unemployment figures confirm the enormous challenge facing a country like Panama, which is going into debt to provide more social assistance, which although necessary, must go hand in hand with a strong strategy to generate employment.

According to the agreed plans, an investment of $4 billion is required in different sectors to generate 140,000 direct jobs and 68,000 indirect jobs.

Among the proposals put forward, there are some of a transversal nature and multisectoral effects, in addition to other sectoral ones, in the energy, tourism, financial, industry, and construction sectors.

Follow-up
When Conep delivered all the work done, it indicated in that document that it could not be interpreted under any circumstances that the work had concluded, nor that the spontaneity of the economy would allow us to get out of the crisis.

They specified that “the task to be followed must focus on the follow-up of the entire process of implementation and monitoring of the agreements reached with a practical approach towards the best interests of the country.”