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Newest Additions
Titled Lot, Full Utilities, 500 mts. from Surf Break, Azuero Peninsula
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One of a Kind Exotic Wild Life Sanctuary
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Beach House with titled Beach Front, Azuero Peninsula
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Furnished apartment for Sale in Albrook
$200,000
mansion in progress in Albrook
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* GREAT PRICE* El Alcazar West Wing Apartment Unit with Ocean and Golf Course View Available for Sale
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High-end, fully equipped, corner oceanfront unit at incredible price
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Beachfront Real Estate, Playa Serena, Coronado - One of a Kind Land and House Overlooking Playa Serena and Playa Gorgona Bay, as well as Punta Chame
$1,600,000
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Tourism Up 11.7% in Panama Despite Ecomonic Crisis
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In spite of the global financial crisis, tourism grew in Panama 11.7% in January, said tourism Minister Ruben Blades today. He said both the number of visitors and the money spent in the country by tourists increased.
According to the data from the Tourism Authority of Panama, in January 2009 - 162,099 tourists visited Panama, 11.7% more than during the same month in 2008, representing an increase of 15.9% in tourism spending, up to $136.9 million dollars. Blades said the "traditional" tourists who arrive in Panama come from the United States, Canada, Costa Rica, and Colombia. Now, Panama is trying to focus efforts on attracting European tourists "because of the Euro" and because "they stay longer, between 15 to 28 days" said Blades.
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A trip to Panama is a trip to bird paradise
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By David Bird - The Gazette
When it comes to birding, I am convinced that I get more thrills from showing a new bird to a novice bird-watcher than seeing one the first time myself.
I visited Panama with my wife and our two offspring this past December as part of our annual Christmas getaway from the stress of gift-giving. While Derek and Erin prefer to go to places that offer body-surfing and snorkeling, I always insist that there be opportunities for me to see new birds.
Bridging two continents, the tiny country of Panama is home to more bird species than any other in Central America; some are resident year-round, while many are migrants from the U.S and Canada. Panama encompasses a mere 78,000 square kilometers but contains an amazing avifauna of around 972 species. Canada, just a tad short of a million square kilometers, is home to about 482 bird species.
We chose the Royal Decameron Beach Resort in Farallon and, as expected, the first birds I laid eyes upon after stepping off the shuttle bus were blue-gray tanager, great-tailed grackle, social flycatcher, magnificent frigatebird, and brown pelican. I particularly enjoyed watching a horde of black vultures gobbling up a good-size fish carcass that was washed up on the beach.
It is certainly possible to do some decent birding right on the grounds of the resort. A fellow Quebecker named Jean Bernier and his companion racked up about 75 species without even getting into a vehicle!
I befriended Jean during the one birding excursion offered by the resort to the Cerro Campana National Park. Our guide was a 32-year-old Indian named Igua Jiminez.
When we arrived just inside the park gates and Jiminez pointed out a hawk perched above the road in a tree and called it a roadside hawk, I was a bit apprehensive about his birding skills. It was clearly a broad-winged hawk, a migrant species that commonly breeds in North America. I kept my mouth shut because all birders, including me, are prone to occasionally making snap but incorrect identifications.
My fears were unfounded. Within the next hour, "Iggy" demonstrated his excellent birding skills, pointing out by song alone, a number of birds in the tropical rainforest, including antshrikes, eleania, and leaftossers.
Neither of my kids are especially interested in bird-watching, although they do enjoy seeing the more spectacular species from time to time. But for my daughter, Erin, there is one exception - toucans, specifically the famous keel-billed toucan or "Fruit Loops" bird. So I made it my goal to show her one.
The four of us rented a car and headed off to one of Panama's jewels for bird-watching - Pipeline Road, a national park.
Pipeline Road (or Camino del Oleoducto) has consistently set world record bird counts in a 24-hour period - up to 367 different birds, including thick-billed motmot, slaty-tailed trogon, and of course, keel-billed toucan.
We had barely parked the car when I looked up into a tall dead tree and spotted about five birds with toucan-like beaks. I had my binoculars into Erin's hands within five seconds and she got her first look at, well, not a keel-billed toucan, but a collared aracari. Close, but no cigar!
I was proud of my daughter when she spotted a breath-taking violaceous trogon, a new species for me.
So did Erin eventually see her keel-billed toucan? Well, she did spot a silhouette of one flying high over the road while departing Cerro Campana, but it was not sufficient to quell her desire to get a really good look.
Secretly, this pleases me. A best buddy of mine has purchased a winter home on the grounds of the Royal Decameron and you can be darn sure that both Erin and I will knocking on his door more than once in the not-too-distant future.
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Panama Hopes to Beat The Global Financial Crisis
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By Jeremy Schwartz - Inside Costa Rica
Cranes hover over the skyline like futuristic insects, buzzing around half-finished skyscrapers that make Panama City look like Miami or Hong Kong.
If any country is poised to withstand the ravages of the global financial crisis, it just might be tiny Panama, which has quietly become a regional economic powerhouse in the past five years.
Fueled by a superheated real estate market, windfalls from the Panama Canal and a burgeoning banking system, economic growth hit 9.2 percent in 2008 after soaring to 11.5 percent the year before.
As nations from the United States to Japan confront shrinking economies in 2009, officials in Panama are predicting relatively robust growth of 4 or 5 percent this year.
"This global crisis arrived in a moment in which we find ourselves stronger than we have been in the past," Minister of the Economy Hector Alexander said. "In Panama, the dominant topic isn't the recession."
While unemployment has soared in the United States, the unemployment rate in Panama fell from about 14 percent in 2004 to 6.5 percent last year. And as the U.S. is adjusting to life with 12-digit budget deficits, Alexander said Panama is hoping 2009 will be its third consecutive year with a budget surplus.
But the nation hasn't been immune to the global recession. Its real estate market might be heading for a sharp downturn.
Matt Landau, a New Jersey native and Panama City investment consultant, said real estate sales have declined precipitously in recent months, especially among the U.S. and European buyers who largely fueled the boom.
"When I first got here (about four years ago), people were buying (properties) for $200,000 and then flipping them for double or more in six to 12 months," he said. "That was happening even up to a year and a half ago."
Now, Landau said, Panama City is bracing for a glut of high-priced condominiums.
And as global trade is pummeled by the recession, Panama Canal officials expect the number of cargo ships passing through the waterway — and the tolls they pay to the Panamanian government — to fall almost 6 percent this year.
Even there, Panama has an ace up its sleeve in the form of a $5.2 billion Panama Canal expansion, which will widen the canal's locks to allow larger ships to pass through.
Although recession wasn't on the minds of Panamanian voters when they approved the expansion in 2006, officials see the megaproject as a perfectly timed stimulus that will directly create nearly 7,000 jobs in a country of 3 million and spark the creation of thousands of secondary jobs, just as the economy begins to sag.
"It's as if we are increasing public sector spending by 35 to 40 percent," Alexander said. "Today it works as a fiscal stimulus."
Percentagewise, the canal expansion dwarfs any stimulus project the United States is planning. The project represents nearly a quarter of Panama's $23 billion gross domestic product. By comparison, the $787 billion stimulus package in the U.S. represents about 5 percent of America's $14 trillion gross domestic product.
Counternarcotics officials have long suspected that Panama's boom has also been aided by an influx of money from criminal organizations. According to the U.S. State Department's 2008 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, the country's construction and offshore banking sectors are particularly susceptible to money laundering.
But Panama's economy has been helped by a stable and peaceful political scene, which the nation has enjoyed since the 1989 ouster of dictator Manuel Noriega.
When Noriega was captured by U.S. troops, Panama's economy was in shambles, paralyzed by an economic embargo of Noriega's regime. Successive democratically elected administrations have focused on economic recovery, enacting reforms and privatizing sectors such as telecommunications and electricity.
But some critics say Panama's spectacular economic growth in the past five years has left out the majority of its people.
"The problem is that the growth has stayed in a few hands," said Rolando Gordon, a University of Panama economics professor. "The economic boom hasn't been able to resolve any of the great social problems of the country."
Gordon said government statistics obscure the fact that even as the country's economy exploded, the percentage of Panamanians laboring precariously in the nation's informal sector — doing things such as selling fruit at intersections — has risen from 33 percent in 2001 to 44 percent today.
Gordon added that public schools are underfinanced, and access to drinking water remains problematic for many Panamanians. At the same time, the price of basic foodstuffs has increased.
"This boom we're having is tremendous," taxi driver Jose Cano said. "But for the poor, the humble, we aren't seeing the boom. The price of food is going up. I have my own taxi, so I'm doing pretty well, but there are a lot of people who are recycling cans and stealing scrap metal."
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Panama Secures $100M IDB Loan
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The Panamanian government received a $100 million loan from the Inter-American Development Bank to finance priority programs, the IDB said Thursday in a statement. In return for the loan, the Panamanian government committed to reform its energy industry to make it more efficient and more competitive, the statement said.
The loan is the first of a series of three. Panama, a dollarized economy, enjoyed a fiscal surplus of 0.5% of gross domestic product in 2008, or nearly $98 million, and expects the same fiscal surplus of 0.5% of GDP this year. Its debt profile is also trending down, to 45% of GDP in 2008 from 54% of GDP in 2007.
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