Word: panama
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...also a chance, the officials agree, for Panama's ruling class to shed its notorious reputation for brazen malfeasance by managing the new canal wealth responsibly and finally doing right by the 40% of Panamanians living in poverty. The country's GDP per capita is $4,318, which still makes it No. 2 in Central America. Serious doubts about income redistribution are a big reason that only 22% of respondents to a recent poll said they thought the expansion would bring real economic benefits to Panama and its population of 3.2 million. Some 64% of Panamanians said they support...
...canal is Panama's oil, its critical resource. But under the Americans it was run like a military installation. Since the canal's handover on Dec. 31, 1999, the Panama Canal Authority (ACP) has run it like a business--more efficiently, more safely and more profitably--doubling toll income to an estimated $1.4 billion this year. (The Suez Canal earns $3.5 billion.) That's nearly 10% of GDP. "Before, the canal was just about moving ships," says ACP administrator Alberto Alemán. "Today it's about moving cargo...
Still, the biggest problem is traffic jams: more than 14,000 ships transit the canal each year, stretching its outdated capacity. And a growing share of that freight can't cross Panama at all. By 2010, the number of post-Panamax vessels in the global commercial fleet is expected to jump 74%, to about 700, and by 2011, they will probably account for half the world's oceangoing commercial-cargo capacity, according to the World Shipping Council in Washington. The expansion design, approved by Panama's Congress last spring, would dig a new approach channel about five miles long just...
...many Panamanians feel Torrijos and the project's backers are "looking through rose-colored glasses," says Fernando Manfredo, the canal's former deputy administrator and a leader of the anti-expansion campaign. Among their fears: increasing Panama's already sizable foreign debt, now more than $10 billion, or about 60% of GDP; other credible estimates indicate the expansion's cost would be closer to $8 billion; and uncertainties, like a possible downturn in Asia's economies, which could deflate the promised benefits. "Our big concern," says Manfredo, "is whether we'll really recuperate what we're going to throw into...
Torrijos insists they will. Thanks to its unique location, "Panama was born globalized," he says, "born to do projects like this." Alas, piracy is also a part of Panama's colorful history--and many of its politicians still bring that tradition to projects like this, which is why Torrijos has begun long overdue anticorruption measures like contract-bidding reforms. He knows that even if voters endorse the expansion, it's likely to be judged less by how well it digs supersize ships into the canal than by how well it digs Panama out of its Third World troubles...