The government says Panama’s economy will grow by at least 5% in 2022

Panama City, Jan. 2 (EFE). Panama’s GDP will grow at least 5% in 2022, driven by construction, mining and the interoceanic canal, among other sectors, according to a headline this Sunday from the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) Hector Alexandre.

“We are very optimistic about what will happen in 2022,” Alexander, who has set GDP growth next year “will not be less than 5%,” said in a public statement.

The government has calculated that in 2021 the economy will grow by about 10% compared to 2020, when GDP collapsed by 17.9% due to the crisis caused by the ongoing pandemic.

Alexander said that the activities that will boost the economy in 2022 are those that showed “signs of recovery” in 2021, such as “construction, mining, exports, wholesale and retail trade, operation of the canal and associated activities and the port.” system in general.

The Minister of Economy added that initially it was calculated that the level of national production, which reached in 2019, before the global health crisis due to Covid-19, will recover in 2023, but it is “likely” that it will be before 2022 due to the dynamism shown by the economy.

Alexander said that in the first nine months of 2021 alone, growth was around 15%, a figure that more than doubled the region’s growth.

Panama recorded a 14.9% increase in gross domestic product between January and September 2021, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics and Census (INEC) revealed by the President of Panama, Laurentino Cortizo, on Sunday.

Minister Alexander also spoke of the “good expectation” that tourism, one of the sectors hardest hit by the pandemic, “will undoubtedly be one of the engines of growth in the coming years”.

Alexander “highlighted the anti-cyclical policy that has been implemented since the beginning of the crisis period due to the pandemic and the important turn that public finances have begun to take towards a more sustainable path, which will allow a reduction of between 65% and 70% of the debt-GDP (relationship) The Ministry of Finance pointed out.

The impact of the pandemic on public finances, such as a significant drop in collection, has driven the country into markets, bringing the debt/GDP ratio to the current 70% from the 46% it was before the health emergency. EFE

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