The Social Cabinet reports that it is working on the preparation of the Third National Voluntary Report (INV) of the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which will officially reveal the progress and challenges that Panama faces to end poverty, protect the environment and improve people’s lives.
The INV, which will be presented next September, will reflect the progress between 2018-2021 and will analyze 107 development indicators in terms of poverty, education, health, employment, housing, environment and economy, among other topics.
“The information is based on evidence and statistical data from the country on the effort that the National Government has made in conjunction with different actors such as civil society, the private sector, academia, etc., to improve the quality of life of Panamanians. and Panamanians and achieve sustainable human development”, indicated the Minister of Social Development (MIDES), María Inés Castillo.
The elaboration of the INV is an arduous and rigorous process that implies the analysis of public policies, consultations with multiple actors in society and the generation and analysis of statistics, the latter through a Specialized Work Group, which analyzes all the information, which is validated by the National Institute of Statistics and Census of the Comptroller General of the Republic.
“Panama is committed to complying with the 2030 Agenda and achieving the SDGs. That is why we implemented the Plan Colmena National Strategy as an accelerator of it, together with other public policy initiatives, strategies and programs aimed at combating the different expressions of multidimensional poverty”, added Minister Castillo.
The Government values the different measurement initiatives worldwide, such as the Sustainable Development Goal Index, designed by the institution of independent experts Sustainable Development Solutions Network, led by the economist Jeffrey D. Sachs, which uses traditional international data, but also does not traditional and is a tool for analysis of country trends using official and unofficial data.
In fact, under the same index we can verify that from the year 2016 (70/60.71) to the year 2022 (105/64.00) Panama advanced 35 positions in this ranking. By the year 2023, Panama improves in the performance of the Index, but changed its position in the ranking, as a result of updating the figures of the countries.
According to the Resident Coordinator of the United Nations System in Panama, Ana Patricia Graça, “if we do a more complete analysis of the index trends, we will see that, comparatively, the country is recovering positions.
In 2019, Panama was ranked 90th in the ranking. Due to the covid-19 crisis in 2022, Panama fell back to 105th place, losing 15 positions compared to 2019. Post-pandemic, in 2023, Panama shows the country’s effort in terms of public policies, recovering 8 positions, moving to the position 97. In other words, Panama is once again in the top 100 places, showing its post-COVID recovery capacity and its commitment to the SDGs.”
Panama is the only nation in Latin America that is part of the Board of Directors of the Coalition for the Synthesis of the United Nations SDGs and is joining other global initiatives of the United Nations such as the SDG PUSH, a tool that will contribute to the efforts of evaluation and acceleration of the Objectives.
“We are halfway through the global commitment to build a more just, prosperous, and peaceful society, where structural inequalities are identified and combated so that no one is left behind,” said Minister Castillo.
