Panama needs more qualified foreigners

Panama has a has deficit in skilled labor  and the companies that operate under the regime of multinational headquarters, of Panama Pacifico or City of Knowledge, and the entities of the financial and logistic center, which have made Panama a regional hub, are intensive in highly qualified work, said   Venezuelan economist and Harvard University says  Ricardo Hausmann .

He was speaking at the conference “The State and the Market: How to organize a productive relationship” on Friday, October 25, in the City of Knowledge.

To cover the deficit, “Immigration policy has to evolve to further support development, because highly qualified foreigners are complementary, not substitutes for Panamanians.”

The economist questioned that to be a professor at a public university in Panama, you must be a Panamanian citizen, because this restricts the transfer of knowledge to students. And he set the example of Silicon Valley, the mecca of innovation in California, , where 54% of technology workers are foreigners and only 18% are Californians.

Hausmann said that Panama can learn from what has happened in other countries in the last 15 years and recommended that it be evaluated when this type of mechanism should be used and when it is more pertinent to execute the projects through the budget, since typically the return required by the private-public association investor is higher than the cost of state financing.