PROFILE OF PANAMA

Tocumen International Airport has undergone two expansions in the last ten years and become the largest airport in Latin America with more than 50 gates and over 16 million passengers. Panama serves as a hub to connect South America and the Caribbean with the United States, especially with Texas. Houston’s Intercontinental is one of the main passenger feeders to Tocumen’s “Hub of the Americas”. Recently Panama is making efforts to develop Tocumen as a air cargo hub with connections to Houston which has a small market share of the Latin America cargo market.

Most of Panama’s energy market is privatized, offering opportunities to businesses. Several U.S. companies, many of them from Texas, have operations in Panama. Besides fossil fuels, Panama is making progress in the renewable energy sector including hydro, solar and wind which now accounts for 15% combined of the electricity’s installed generation capacity. Chevron of California/Texas the leading U.S. company is fossil fuel imports and AES of Virginia is the leading generation company in Hydro and LNG. In addition, AES recently inaugurated a LNG hub for Central America in Panama.

Investment over the years has been quite extensive covering ports, roads, bridges, housing, utilities and projects related to the Panama Canal Cluster, leading to new investments in infrastructure and other complementary projects. The building of the fourth bridge over the Panama Canal, the extension of the Metro Line #3 will continue the pace of building infrastructure projects. A newly approved Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) Law will also accelerate infrastructure projects. 

  The Panama Canal expansion and the location of the Colon Free Zone -the largest free zone in the world outside of Hong Kong- have made Panama a logistics and transshipment hub. The expansion of the Panama Canal has opened additional opportunities and interest on the part of U.S. retailers to use Panama as a logistics center for South American countries. In addition, the interconnection of the land corridors has been instrumental for the Tocumen Airport to begin an ambitious regional air cargo project that will bring opportunities for the U.S. and specifically Texas market. 

 Panama is surrounded by 1,600 Km. of coasts with ports in the Pacific and the Atlantic. The Panama Ship Registry is the largest in the world with over 8,000 ships registered and provides a full service 24/7. The ports in the Pacific and Atlantic, linked by the Trans-isthmian railroad, trans-ship more than 8 million TEUs (containers of 20 feet) a year, making it the most developed port system in Latin America and the Caribbean. There are more container cranes in Panama than all of Latin American countries combined. More than 14,000 ships transit The Panama Canal and the United States is the main user. The Route Asia-Texas/Atlantic Coast through the Canal has become the most important and provides competitive access to U.S. products to Asia and Asian products to the U.S. Houston is the #1 destination of northbound transits from the Panama Canal strengthening the strategic partnership.

Panama imports more than $12 U.S. billion a year and the United States is Panama’s #1 trading partner. The U.S. and Panama have a Free Trade Agreement formalized in 2012 and an Overseas Private Investment Corporation Agreement that guarantees U.S. investments in Panama. A few Texas companies are important players in Panama’s economy and some even have use Panama as Regional Headquarters. Some of the Texas companies with important presence in Panama include Dell of Ground Rock/Austin which has close to 3,000 employees, Haliburton of Houston that uses Panama as a regional hub for services to the oil & gas industry of the region, United Airlines which has a marketing agreement with Copa Airlines to transport passengers to South America and the Caribbean, Chevron that has its operational headquarters for Latin America in Houston and is the most important company oil operations in Panama, and American Airlines from Dallas that operates daily flights to Panama from Miami and a weekly flight from Dallas.