It has been three years since the last serious discussion of opening Darien gap: the only thing that stands between road connection between Colombia and Panama. The idea is in the air again.
The Minister for Maritime Affairs and Administrator of the Panama Maritime Authority (AMP), Jorge Barakat Pitty, said: "We must begin discussing the possibility of building a road to Colombia if we want to move onto the next level".
Barakat Pitty emphasized that "we have to sit down and talk together about the issue". He also said that the current government administration has nothing definite.
The official said "let's close our eyes and ask ourselves what would happen if there is a route that connects Panama with Colombia? The cargo would go directly to Cartagena or it would be more viable to stop on the Pacific side of Panama and then forward it to Colombia."
Yira Poyser, a representative of Bless Truck, one of the largest land cargo companies in Panama, said that it is important to sit down and analyze the benefits that the opening of this route could bring to the country.
The topic of the opening of the Darien Gap was presented during Cade 2015; however, it did not advance much. At that time, Juan Barnes, who worked on his doctoral thesis on the logistical advantages that it can bring to Panama, pointed out that there were only 58 kilometers of road that is required to finish to unite Colombia with Panama, reaching a market of 47 million people in the direct neighbor to Panama.
The professor pointed out that Colombia maintains a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with Central American countries such as Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and it is estimated that between 15% and 20% of interregional trade could occur through this route.
The regional trade would increase by 3% during the first five years. Barnes, believes that there would be a development of new activities resulting from the movement of cargo that would occur between the North and the South.
Nevertheless, the issue of opening the Darien Gap comes with a series of environmental and security risks in the minds of many Panamanians and that is what prevents it from being debated. However, at the time of 2015 Barnes mentioned that all of this is debatable. There are more positive sides to it than the negative. “Beyond it is the border to South America, not just Colombia”, said the professor.
