Hottest Month
April is the hottest month of the year and the heat felt recently is normal, said Isaac Castillo, general manager of the Electric Transmisión Company (ETESA). It also causes more electricity consumption. One day last week reached a record of 50,000 mega-watts.

Alberto Pino Grael, of the Labora-tory of Physics at the University of Panama, explained that in this period the sun is closer to the Earth.

Government spending criticized
A year before the general elections of 2009, the Cabinet approved additional appropriations to the budget. The main beneficiar-ies will be the Ministry of the Presidency, which was assigned US$12.9 million for community works of the Social Investment Fund and the National Assembly, which will receive US$4.5 million to hire staff for the period between May-August 2008.

Leaders of the opposition criti-cized the appropriations. “These are disguised so that members of the assembly can go proselyt-izing”, said Ricardo Martinelli, the leader of the Democratic Change Party.

Puerto Armuelles refinery study
The Minister of Commerce and Industry, Carmen Gisela Vergara, will meet in Los Angeles with representatives of the companies Occidental Petroleum and Qatar Petroleum which are working on the second phase of studies of the project for a refinery in Puerto Armuelles. The study should be ready before the end of the year and will define whether the refin-ery will be built or not.

Microsoft confiscates software
Microsoft, in conjunction with international agencies, confiscated more than 162,000 software copies valued at US$18.2 million. The raids against software piracy organizaitons were conducted in 14 Latin American countries, among which were Panama, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru and the Dominican Republic.

Financial company investigated
Forex Finance, a company regis-tered in Panama under the name of Evolution Market Group, which promotes financial intermediation services on-line in the foreign exchange market with returns of between 10 and 12%, is being investigated in Spain for operating outside the regulations on market values. One daily newspaper said that the Superintendency of Banks in Panama could suspend the activities of the company.

OAS Meets here
The Administrative Tribunal of the Organization of American States (OAS), chose Panama to meet for the first time outside its headquar-ters in Washington.

Population expands
Last year approximately 70,000 births were reported in Panama according to health authorities. Statistics show that each year the Panamanian population grows by up to 15%, reported the daily “La Estrella”.

Cellphone concession
The three companies that will compete for the two new 20-year cellular telephone concessions in Panama will submit their financial offers on May 7. Digicel Panama S.A., belonging to Irishman, Denis O´Brien; Telemóvil El Salvador S.A.- a subsidiary of Millicom International S.A. of Luxembourg and Claro Panama, a subsidiary of the company America Movil, owned by multimillionaire Mexi-can, Carlos Slim, are all submit-ting their financial offers with a base of US$57 million.

Panama back in Olympics
Panama was officially incorpo-rated into the International Olym-pic Committee which lifted the moratorium that it had applied since July 2007 to the National Olympic Committee. Giselle Dav-ies, spokeswoman for the Olym-pic Committee gave the news in Beijing, China; it was reported by the news agency DPA.

Shrimp close season ends
The close season on shrimp fish-ing ended last week. It began in February to give an opportunity for the shrimp to recover biologically for 70 days in order to breed.

Changuinola
With 2.5 kilometers of asphalt access roads from Almirante to the town of Charco La Pava 25 percent of the work has been done for the construction of the hydro-electric project, Changuinola 1. Late this year the Changuinola River will be diverted to begin construction on the dam, report-ed Humberto Gonzalez, general manager of AES Panama.

Ag-exports grow
The daily “La Estrella” comment-ed that gone are the years where banana and shrimp products were considered Panama´s only non-traditional exports. Now, dehy-drated frozen fruit juice, powdered seasonings, cassava, banana and organic coffee are marketed suc-cessfully in 27 European Union countries, as well as in Taiwan, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Mexico and Costa Rica.

Coastal strip criticized
Much pavement and little green space. That is the claim of envi-ronmental groups after landscape designs of the coastal strip paral-lel to Ave. Balboa across the city´s waterfront were revealed. The Ministry of Public Works promised that the project would be a large public park. Now we know that only 23% of the area, known as the “green zone”, will have gar-dens, say the groups.

Designing less power consumption
Panamanian engineers and architects are designing compu-ter systems to reduce electricity consumption in buildings. “Glo-bal warming and the increase in energy consumption has become a headache for these profes-sionals, who are developing new energy control mechanisms,” said the secretary general of the Pana-manian Society of Engineers and Architects (SPIA), Frank Camp-ble.

Save the sharks
A campaign to save sharks in coastal Panamanian waters seeks to collect 100,000 signatures. It was announced by the director of the organization Mar-Viva, Gabriela Etchelecu. “As part of this effort, we have sent a letter to President Martin Torrijos with eleven points recommend-ing the strengthening of the legal framework of fishing activities, small fisheries management and implementation of bans, among other requests”, she said.

Preferential mortgages
Representatives of the trade unions of the country asked the National Assembly to amend Bill 140, the Consumer Support Pro-gram (CAP), and extend the prefer-ential mortgage interest to homes worth up to US$100,000. The draft submitted to the Executive Committee on Finance proposes extending the limit to US$80,000. At present it is US$62,500.

Tourism from Europe Tourist Bureau
The Panama Tourist Bureau (IPAT) and the airline KLM have reached an agreement to promote in Europe the Amsterdam-Pan-ama flight, which began operat-ing at the end of March. IPAT will contribute 50 percent of the US$1.2 million advertising cam-paign, which will be most intense in Holland, Italy, Spain, Germany, France and the United Kingdom, said Kathy Guardia, director of Marketing and Communication of IPAT. Promotion will also include the Nordic countries (Finland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway) and Switzerland, said Axel Met-selaar, general manager of KLM in Panama.

Construction booms
The dynamism of the construc-tion industry continues and the end of the first quarter of this year saw investment amounting to US$357.8 million for building per-mits for apartment, residential and commercial buildings. Accord-ing to data from the Municipality of Panama, 472 projects would bring in a total of US$1,571,000 in taxes.

Cable Theft
From June 2007 until February 2008, a total of 22,307 customers had been hit by the theft of cables of the telephone network, accord-ing to statistics of the Nation-al Authority for Public Services (ASEP). In December 2007 and January 2008 the largest number of thefts was recorded—over 5,000 each month.

Food alert for Central America
The president of Nicaragua, Dan-iel Ortega, said he would resume his initiative to declare a food alert in Central America and deal with the problem of skyrocketing pric-es of food. He said that he dis-cussed the matter by telephone with the president of Panama, Martin Torrijos.

Opposition Alliance in trouble
The steps that three opposition parties took to form a grand oppo-sition alliance, found a stumbling block. Guillermo Endara, presi-dent of the Moral Vanguard of the Fatherland Party, reported that the president of the Panameñista Party and presidential candidate, Juan Carlos Varela, wants to break the “gentlemen´s agreement” that keeps together the Patriotic Union Party, led by Guillermo Ford, and the Liberal Republican Nationalist Movement (Molirena), chaired by Sergio Gonzalez Ruiz.

U.S Embassy helps the Embera Indians
In an attempt to help the extreme poverty facing the Emberá Indi-ans, the United States Embassy in Panama, through the company, Farmers Insurance Company, made a donation of stoves, farm chickens, shirts, and freezers among other things. Edisa Degai-sa, leader of the Indian com-munity noted that 98% of the Embera indians are victims of extreme poverty, so this help is of great benefit for them and their families.

Customs dept does good business
Each week the Customs Depart-ment seizes around US$55,727, from smuggling. In the first three months of this year the Depart-ment tripled its figures. To date they have collected US$725,668 on CIF value, which is the amount indicating the price of goods including cost, insurance and freight.

Inflation rising
The consulting firm Indesa pre-dicts that inflation in Panama will continue to rise, at least until 2009, closing the year at 7% and in 2009, 8%. Both forecasts are above the historical aver-age (around 1%) and the figures in the past three years which ranged between 2.9% and 4.9%, according to the archives of the Comptroller´s Office.

The consumer price index (CPI), the main indicador of inflation, showed an increase of 8.8% in March in comparison with March 2007, it was reported by the Comptroller General of the Repub-lic. The prices of food and bev-erages (15%), transport (13.3%) and housing (7.6%) pushed up the cost of living.