Economics on Wednesday

2020 has been a difficult year for everybody, where we had to adapt to many things by trying to save our lives and to survive economically. But the COVID 19 pandemic has resulted in an unprecedented global economic crisis. But not a crisis that is the result of some kind of financial problem or "screw-up" or the speculation of the unscrupulous, but it is a crisis that provokes a pandemic that has kept us – more or less time – within some kind of quarantine. Now, this does not mean that all businesses or independents workers were affected, many survived by doing what is necessary to survive, while other businesses located niches to be in, other businesses flourished, and delivery became the standard of the post-COVID 19 world. This article I write at the beginning of all new year's is meant to give you an idea of where we could invest in this year, based on the opportunities, laws, demand, that exists at any given time, and that we could take advantage of. This year is s...

Although there is still uncertainty about 2021, basically because of the resulting problems from COVID regrowth not only in Panama but in the rest of the world, and even though we do not yet have a date for vaccination to begin in our country (they have just announced that the first 40,000 doses arrive in 2 or 3 weeks), I always stay positive, I think that in this country, we can turn the bad situations around, and we can get our economy moving forward quickly. After my forecast for the end of 2020 where I see a decline in GDP by order of 20%, unemployment of 18%, and inflation of -1%, 2021 may bring us a fundamental change in our main macroeconomic figures after a year of recession, but it did not get to become stagflation. My forecast for 2021 leads us to GDP growth in the order of 10%, unemployment of 10% thinking that the vaccine will arrive in the first quarter, and by the second half, we could be able to vaccinate the whole population (at least the vast majority of the 3 millio...

2020 has proven to be a very special year. Some will say that it was a year to forget, others will be able to say that it was a year when we learned a lot, others that the Panamanian does not learn anything and will always stumbles upon the same stone, in short everyone can have his own opinion on it, but it was definitely a different year. I will try to outline a small summary of what happened to us and talk about the GDP figures for the 3Q that came out last week, and how little has been said about unemployment according to a telephone survey that INEC (National Institute of Statistics and Census) did instead of the face-to-face survey they normally do in different pre-selected houses. The year had started slower than in 2019, in fact when we look at the GDP figures for the first quarter, even though we had grown, it was less than 1% (0.3% to be more accurate in nominal GDP and 0.4% in real GDP), compared to the first quarter of 2019. And when compared to the fourth quarter of 2019...