The Chamber of Commerce, Industries and Agriculture of Panama (Cciap) has made an urgent call to local authorities at the national level so that, once and for all, they give the Decentralization Law the use and character for which it was created. .
According to the union, for decades, these authorities rightly demanded a more equitable endowment of the resources that the Central Government absorbed almost entirely. They emphasize that finally, the aforementioned law was approved, but instead of respecting its spirit, its use is frequently seen in matters very different from community emergencies, in another example of what a weak institutional framework generates.
Along the same lines, Jorge “Dicky” Panay, who is a consultant for the Association of Municipalities of Panama (Amupa), stated that decentralization is a method of State administration, adding that Panama is the most centralized country in Latin America and the planet Earth, which has created a structural problem in the administration of the state, where the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of public spending is reflected at this time.
“With the pandemic and now with the war, this methodological situation of state administration is magnified, therefore there is a problem of state administration,” he remarked.
The other problem is that the state did not comply; “He made a decentralization law, first suspended it and then castrated it and deformed decentralization. The local structure, like all the country’s political structures, is immersed in patronage practices more than in development practices, the other problem is the corruption that has penetrated all levels of the state.
Panay affirmed that there is a serious error in disqualifying decentralization as a methodology of public administration in a country that has 4.5 million inhabitants and a state budget of almost 25 billion dollars.
