According to the economist Ernesto Bazán, a fundamental weight in this purpose will correspond more to the State than to private investment, to which is added the reform of the Disability, Old Age and Death program of the Social Security Fund (CSS).
The analyst told the newspaper La Estrella de Panamá that although the rise in Gross Domestic Product expected for this year would be between seven and nine percent, ordinary citizens do not feel this.
Unemployment reached 11 and up to 18 percent last December, according to conservative statistics, but Bazán estimated that it could be up to 20 percent and warned that these figures must be addressed with a public investment plan that turns on the economic engine of the canal country.
“The unemployment rate is a better indicator of the spending capacity that families have,” he asserted.
According to the specialist, in the last three years the mining sector represented two percent of Panama’s GDP growth and today it means nine percent and could exceed 10 percent.
However, he added, there is a rebound effect due to the businesses that are opening after the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic, but that does not mean new hires. Economic growth does not necessarily impact more employment, she clarified.
He also recalled that the construction, real estate, retail and tourism sectors have been hit by Covid-19 and are not in a position to invest.
If it is true that the State can have an indirect job creation role, not by hiring bureaucrats, but through investments in infrastructure: highways, subway lines, bridges, hospitals, schools, he said.
Regarding the restructuring of the Disability, Old Age and Death program of the Social Security Fund (CSS), the researcher explained that it is urgent to resolve something that is bankrupt.
That means that the day will come when there will be no money to pay pensioners and we will probably have it in two years if we do nothing, he remarked. “Today the CSS has become political loot,” she denounced.
On the other hand, he predicted that if the current situation around the war between Ukraine, Russia and the North Atlantic Organization, together with the United States, worsens, this will bring higher inflation to the isthmus and the rise in the price of food and goods in general.
When an armed conflict occurs, he concluded, it is obvious that there will be blockades that reduce exchange and trade and prices will rise, and we are price takers.
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