Panama's Green Revolution and Investment Opportunities
The Opportunity
Much has and will be said about Panama’s tremendous growth, during the past decade. Business opportunities are abundant and global investment dollars are pouring in by the billions. Panama has all the hallmarks of a world-class investment venue: inexpensive U.S. dollar assets, impressive tax exemptions, world hub for (shipping, air passenger and cargo transport, crossroad of five major fiber optic cables), $5 billion Canal expansion, $12 billion in oil refinery and pipeline projects, $5 billion in new container ports and expansion, $600 million proposed for twelve major hydro-electric projects, ethanol processing hub for Petrobas of Brazil, rampant hotel and condo construction, call centers, hospital and health care centers, and a burgeoning film and entertainment industry.
Panama has enjoyed a “runaway capitalist holiday” which desperately needs to be balanced and mediated with our once-pristine natural resources: air, water, eco-systems, indigenous populations, and tropical rainforests. Stress signs and irony abound. Panama’s warp-speed concrete and steel growth, is accompanied by warp-speed destruction of eco-systems, built with Divine patience over millenniums. Towering skyscrapers hover above ancient sewers and pot-holed roads. Gleaming shopping centers sell Rolex, Hermes, and Vuitton while some of the world’s best indigenous cultures and artisans struggle to keep their families and rainforest in tact. The gap between the Gucci rich and Raca-taca poor continues to widen; poverty breeds crime; and now Panama has the second highest per capita prison population in Latin America. Global corporations, more powerful than many countries, pit their capitalist precepts against communists, socialists and union leaders world-wide. In Latin America, Hugo Chavez’s Movimiento Bolivariano has gained valuable ground against what they call U.S. imperialistic/capitalistic hegemony.
These stress signs, and the skyrocketing price of oil, cry-out for new investment strategies in Panama. This paper will focus on just a few “natural capitalism” opportunities, now available in Panama. Panama has all of the basic ingredients for economic and environmental greatness --- far better even than two stalwart countries: Ireland and Singapore. We have more natural resources, a more culturally diverse population, better and more varied investment opportunities than any other small country in the world. The suggestions below are certainly not innovative. Panama has, and will be, a perfect Latin venue for successful environmental business ventures, now ongoing, in other parts of the world. Our purpose here is merely to offer a few notable pieces of Panama’s capitalist and environmental puzzle, and suggest that they will combine handsomely with new sustainable business ventures.