One of the oldest financial conglomerates JP Morgan estimated that the economy of Panama will grow by 6.5% in 2014. This is slightly lower than the expectations of the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF), the World Bank, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), or the consulting firm Deloitte and the Chamber of Commerce, which all estimated this figure as at least 7%.
“Our general forecast at this point is that GDP of Panama will grow by 6.5% in 2014, which correspond to the potential of the economy. Mainly, this growth will be possible due to the continued expansion of the Canal and other wide infrastructure projects in the country. So far there have been main two forces of the Panamanian economy which protected it from external negative influence,” according to Useli Franco, general analyst at JP Morgan in Centalamerican region. Specialists of the conglomerate also confirmed that there is an obvious economic downturn that Panama is experiencing in the past years. During 2013 growth fell from 10.2% to 8.2%. And now they see that the annual rate continues to slow down.
The main sectors of the economy which added the major effect were the financial services sector, fishing industry, transport and communications.
Despite of the downturn, we should still look at the situation in a positive way. The world economy is going through hard times and on average the world growth is at 3.1%, while Latina America shows average rate of 3.9% and especially Panama 6.5%, according to the above. Such figures still look very impressive compared to the rest of the counties even in years 2008-09. It is also important to mention that the levels of foreign direct investments are very high.
