Last month the President attended the official opening of the internation airport of Scarlett Martinez in Rio Hato. The total budget for the construction was at $53 million, the project included modernization, building of the new running line. The new airport is conveniently located 35 minutes from Coronado and 5 minutes from Playa Blanca.
The opportunities from opening of the new airport are endless. New airport will catch all the tourists’ flows from North America and will attract new direct flight from other areas.
Another recent new was the beginning of the construction of the new exhibition center in Amador Causeway. The project has a high cost at almost $200 million. New Convention and Exhibition Centre will be opened at the end the next year.
So the big question is how Panama, such a small country, is funding all these projects? The main role, as you may assume, plays the Canal, which in 2012 brought in more than a billion dollars in net income. It is expected that in 2017 this figure from the Canal will double that number.
Despite of the fact, that many politicians have expressed serious concerns over the growing debt of the country. Majority of the project noted above are funded by the world’s biggest financial institutions such as International Development Bank and others. The positive sign here is that in comparison with the GDP of Panama the debt is still really small. Especially when compared with other developed countries, such as the U.S., where per each person the government owes over $100,000 of national debt.
