Panama’s booming economy and leading role in the region as the business and transportation hub between the Americas continues to attract large multinational corporations.
According to the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, throughout 2017 twelve new of them have set up the operations in Panama, a few more of them are expected to establish their offices in early 2018.
Namely, there’s a financial giant Visa, a leader in consultancy McKinsey & Co. and CRRC Corp. train manufacturer from China.
A lot of companies have set up the operations in Panama earlier in the last decade, all thanks to the popular regulation called the 2007 Multinational Companies Headquarters Act (SEM). That single decision has given specific benefits for the companies that applied for the license. To this date, the government of Panama has issued almost 150 SEM licenses.
This process is the key influencing force for many other sectors of Panama’s economy, including real estate market. The companies tend to bring in the foreign management teams which often produces interest in high-end real estate sector. Caterpillar, Sony, Procter & Gamble and Samsung are managed by foreign teams in their majority.
Companies that came to Panama in 2017 will invest more than $3 million into the local economy and open at least 75 new job openings just during the first operational year.
