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Thursday, October 6, 2011

Asset Protection in Panama


Reading this article could change your life forever, for the good. Most successful people invest for the future, and plan their retirements, envisioning themselves retiring between 55 to 65 years of age, spending their days fishing or playing golf in Florida.
However, retirement planning is probably the most challenging it has ever been. The financial world today is in absolute chaos. US Treasury bonds are yielding almost zero, and the Fed won’t likely be increasing rates any time soon. Global stock markets are highly overvalued, and as volatile and risky as ever. Global real estate markets are so unstable that bank foreclosures are at all time highs. Inflation is rampant in almost every sector of the global economy. The frenzy for commodities has pushed gold and silver to outrageous prices.
Consequently, the question of where to park our retirement savings is a major cause of stress these days. For over 100 years, we have been conditioned that the best place to invest for retirement is in the stock market. “Diversify in stocks for the long run”, the Wall Street brokers say, while studies show that 90% of non-professional stock traders fail, yet ironically the brokers get paid their trade commissions even when you are losing money.
Then there are the pension funds, mutual funds, and managed portfolios that the government forces us into through our so called tax deferred retirement accounts, which rarely reach their benchmarks, and again the brokers are usually the only people making money by charging management fees, expense ratios, and trade commissions that eat the dismal profits, if any.
For those who stick to the “buy and hold” stock strategy, hoping the market goes up, the problem is that the stock market goes in two directions, up and down. If you happen to retire the year the market had a major correction, you may find yourself 60 years old and forced to work another 10 to 15 years – well, lets’ just say you can forget spending your 60’s and early 70’s playing golf in Florida. Investment models and historical returns are meaningless when external forces like 9/11 or the debt mortgage crisis take their tolls on the stock markets.
STOP GAMBLING WITH YOUR RETIREMENT
When most people buy stocks, they buy them purely on emotion, not on actual due diligence of financial and fundamental analysis. The reality is that most people don’t have the time, the inclination, nor the ability to objectively analyze a company’s present value let alone evaluate it’s future, which means they are ill equipped to invest in stocks because without that information they are essentially gambling.
ACCOMPLISH YOUR RETIREMENT GOALS WITH CERTAINTY
The only way to truly accomplish your plans with accuracy and certainty is through fixed income investments that allow you to calculate the exact amount of time and money you need to save to retire on.
It’s not often that we come across opportunities that enable us to retire according to plan. Spending your retirement days fishing or golfing in Florida is now a reality, thanks to 9% compounded CD’s through Credit Unions in Panama. Yes, you heard that right, Panamanian credit unions are some of the most stable, secure financial institutions in the world today with healthy balance sheets and a growing economy.
With a Panama credit union retirement CD, earning 9% compounded interest, a $300,000 investment turns into $1,150,000 in 15 years. Deposit the $1,150,000 in a 5 year CD at 8% interest, and earn a nice income of $7,660 per month. You are now golfing in Florida.
There are over 150 credit unions in Panama, however, the particular credit union we are referring to here is one formed over 40 years ago by the employees of the largest government ministry in the country, with over 30,000 employees of which 15,000 are credit union members.
Credit Unions in Panama are licensed, registered, regulated cooperatives of savings and credit for employees of various industries and government agencies.
Since credit unions are tax free, non-profit organizations allowing all profits to be paid back in the form of interest to depositors, they are able to pay higher interest rates to their depositors than banks can.
Credit unions are considered by many professionals to be more secure and less risky than banks because they are limited to borrowing up to four times their paid-in capital while banks can borrow up to 10 times their capital, meaning credit unions have less exposure to lower economic cycles or high debt obligations.
Plus, credit unions are limited to making loans within the parameters of their intended purposes, with average loans under $5,000, requiring direct debit payments from the borrowers’ government salary, and mandatory insurance to pay off the loan in the event of death or loss of job – hence extremely low loan default rates.
There has never been a failed credit union in Panama, and they were not even phased by the global economic debt crisis, with a booming economy boasting double-digit growth for the last 4 years.
With Panama credit unions, you can earn 4% interest on savings accounts, up to 8% interest on CD’s, and 9% interest on retirement savings accounts. They can pay higher interest rates to their depositors because they charge an average 14% interest on loans.
Although most Panama credit unions restrict membership to Panamanian residents that work in specific industries, there are a few credit unions that do accept outsiders through a professional introduction.

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Monday, March 28, 2011

A History of Tobacco

Seeing the Magic of the Cigar Rollers of La Pintada
By Escapeartist Staff

It has never been determined exactly where tobacco first sprouted – most feel the plant was first cultivated in modern day Mexico or Honduras – but the myths surrounding the plant have been rich. To the Huron Indians of North America, tobacco was brought into being when the Great Spirit sent forth a woman to enrich the land after a great famine. As this woman traveled the countryside, wherever her right hand touched, there grew potatoes; wherever her left hand touched, there grew corn. After wondering and enriching the land with potatoes and corn, she sat down to rest, when she stood up, there grew tobacco. And the story somehow fits tobacco: relaxation after tension and weariness.

Anyone who has traveled to Europe will find it hard to believe that tobacco has had such a short history there.
People smoke in Europe more than any other place I have visited. The first European to smoke tobacco was Rodrigo de Jerez on the island of Cuba in 1498. Initially the Spaniards did not fine much use for the plant since it did not have any value on the European market: they were looking for gold and silver. Only later did the Spaniards develop the crop and export it to Europe.
And that was only done after the Dutch, English and French discovered how addictive and pleasurable the tarred spirit of tobacco could be. The English in particular fell in love with tobacco first calling it Trindado, after the island of Trinidad. Later they called it Virginia; and finally, tobacco, after the island of Tobago. It is thought that the first Englishman to introduce tobacco to Great Britain was Sir Walter Raleigh. (Raleigh who had tried to settle the Outer Banks of North Carolina by establishing a colony on Roanoke Island in 1584; Raleigh who had ransacked and captured Trindad in 1595 and then used the island to launch a hopeless attempt to discover the Amerindian trick of El Dorado in Venezuela; and Raleigh who was imprisoned in the Tower of London from 1606 to 1616, then in 1616 released and allowed to make another attempt to capture El Dorado, losing his son in Trinidad during the expedition. And Raleigh, who was beheaded in 1618 by James I).


The English liked to sniff their tobacco in the form of snuff, which they have until the present enjoyed as a stimulant. The English became so addicted to tobacco that one English official declared that the tobacco trade might in time be worth more than all Spanish silver and gold in the New World. In fact, the English desire was so great that the Spanish literally burned the plant from Trinidad in order to keep English pirates from smuggling it off the island to Europe.



In the Caribbean tobacco by the 16th and 17th century was a cash crop for the English: it was used as a currency. In the American colonies such as Delaware, farmers traded for English goods with tobacoo. You could say from Europe’s first contact with tobacco until well into the 20th century the desire and therefore the trade in tobacco only increased.


The growing of tobacco is an art and anyone involved in the growing of high-quality tobacco will tell you that tobacco is not farmed but rather gardened.
Inside each tobacco plant there are over 300,000 seeds which could end up as potential plants. The seeds are taken and planted in seedbeds. The seeds have to be handled with care, for if they are not, flavor will be lost. Flavor also depends on the type of soil and climate that the seeds are exposed to. Like wine, tobacco quality depends on the soil and climate it is grown in. Tobacco likes a sandy soil very low in clay.The best soil and climate for tobacco lies along the Rio Cuyaguateje in western Cuba. In Cuba, before planting tobacco the soil must be cut into deep furrows, always on flat land, then the seeds are planted and covered with a fine cloth; this is done to prevent excessive heat and light. After five to eight days the seed germinates and slowly the cloth is removed over intervals. After thirty-five days the tobacco plant is six inches high and then is transplanted to a new seedbed normally in October. Thirty days after this the plant’s bud is taken out to avoid flowering and to maintain aroma. Thirty-days after this, the leaves of the plant are cut from the bottom up since the bottom leaves ripen before the higher-quality top leaves. The tobacco is then hung in bundles to ferment. And finally they are packed in succession of boxes. It is all sixes: six weeks to germinate, six weeks to grow the plant, six weeks to harvest, six weeks to dry and cure, and six weeks to ferment.


Tobacco in Panama
Having lived in Panama for a number of years, most of which were spent in the countryside, I had heard only rumors about the cigar rollers of La Pintada.


La Pintada is a small-town located in the central province of Cocle. The town is about 20 minutes from the capital of Cocle, Penonome. We left Panama City in the early morning rain and reached Penonome at about 11:00am. The road from Penonome to La Pintada begins right next to where the police station is located on the main square of Penonome.


Penonome is set up like most Spanish cities in Latin America: the Spanish used a standard urban plan known as a traza. In the center of Penonome is a rectangular park around which are located a church, government offices and a police station.


Off the central park are eight pararell streets which divide the town into grids. The name Penonome comes from an ancient indian ritual known as the Feast of the Penitents, in which the mountain indians above Penonome would flagellate themselves until they bleed profusely.


This ritual stopped at the beginning of the 20th century. Penonome became famous in the last century because it produced Panama's most famous 20th century president: Arnulfo Arias, the deceased husband of the current president Mireya Moscoso. Penonome today is a wealthy small town that provides modern banking services to the rich agricultural community that surrounds it. It is also known as one of best towns to go wild in during Carnival.


From Penonome, the road to La Pintada is very well maintained and the drive is beautiful as you pass agricultural fields from which farmers take their crops by horseback to the main market in Penonome. We also saw a number of small farms for sale along the road and after talking with some of the locals from La Pintada we found out that a number of foreigners had moved into the area and were setting up small farming operations.
The lay of land as you head towards La Pintada is initially flat but as you get closer to the town the hills above the town come into clearer focus, and from La Pintada forward are mountains and mud tracks that can only be traversed with a 4X4 vehicle.


We arrived in La Pintada and stopped at a small shop that was painted bright red and asked where the cigar rolling factory was located – we learned later that there had been three such factories in the recent past, but two had closed down as the owners moved into other businesses. The road leading to the cigar factory was part grass, part stone and the factory itself was located on a steep slope and surrounded by teak and acacia trees. There were few houses near the factory and the atmosphere was very quiet and very rural.  As we pulled up we saw a young couple walking in and out of the factory very quickly, as though they were excited and sick at the same time.


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Friday, March 25, 2011

New study to map Panama’s sportfishing industry

Posted: Friday, March 25, 2011 - By Tico Times


Panama’s minister of science, technology and innovation recently announced a socio-economic research study on the impact of sportfishing tourism (see Perspective, Page 11). The Billfish Foundation (TBF) in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, U.S., will conduct the research.
Science minister Ruben Berrocal and other Panamanian government ministers are working to enact sound environmental policies to preserve Panama’s resources while creating economic opportunities. Last summer, 
Panama banned the practice of commercial purse seining. Earlier this year it also restricted long-lining.
“My ministry is involved in tourism and the impact of sportfishing on the local marine life is very exciting, so we’re supporting this research,” Berrocal said.
According to Russell Nelson, TBF’s science director, the research study has three parts. “First we’ll map and estimate what’s currently brought into Panama by sportfishing tourism similar to work we’ve recently done in Mexico and Costa Rica,” Nelson said in a statement.
A second step will look at opportunities in Panama for new sportfishing destinations. The third will offer an overview of how Panama is undertaking fisheries and resource management now, and how they might develop a modern science-based system to “move into the 21st century.”
The study is expected to last 18 months.

Established 25 years ago, The Billfish Foundation is the only non-profit organization dedicated solely to conserving and enhancing billfish populations around the world. To learn more, see www.billfish.org.

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Finca Santa Marta

Finca Santa Marta is an organic farm that is devoted to working with the land and it’s abundant fertile soil, clean air, water, and warm tropical sun to grow nutritious, healthy food for Panama.  




 The 42 acre finca is in Bijagual/Santa Marta,  located 30 minutes west of David.





The farm is 17 hectares (45 acres) and has different elevations with the lower level bordering with the Rio GarichĂ©.  This gives different micro-climates that allows to grow different crops outside as well.







At Finca Santa Marta they currently raise:

Cherry tomatoes - 5 varieties
Peppers - both sweet and hot
Kale - 3 varieties
Asian greens - 5 varieties
bok choy - 2 varieties
Snap beans -  5 varieties
Bananas - 4 varieties
Watermelon - 3 varieties
Culinary herbs - plants and cut
Medicinal herbs - plants and cut
Spinach - 2 varieties
Arugula
Carrots - 4 varieties
Sweet Potatoes
Beets - 3 varieties
Egg plant - 4 varieties
Dried beans - 4 varieties
Sprouts - 6 varieties
Oranges, lemons and limes
Free range chickens - process up to 50 a sweek
Free range chicken eggs - 4-5 dozen a day
Beef cattle - 20 - head
and other things.

They currently sell organic products at the Tuesday Market & Meeting on Tuesdays in Boquete from 9-12 am and also on Saturday at Daly's Restaurant in Volcán from 8:30-10:30 am.

Web site for pre-orders for market days:

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Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Fiscal paradise lost

EVER since Panama founded its offshore banking centre in the 1970s, its governments have vowed to resist international demands for information about assets held by foreign citizens in the country. Until the global financial crisis struck in 2008, Panama faced little pressure to cough up such data, because other jurisdictions like the Cayman Islands were more popular with tax cheats. Once the OECD began cracking down on offshore tax evasion, however, and convinced many of the biggest havens to clean up their acts, Panama began to stand out for its intransigence.

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http://www.economist.com/blogs/americasview/2010/12/panamas_finance_industry

Monday, November 22, 2010

Dredging Today – Panama Canal Expansion Moves Ahead


The expansion of Panama Canal joining the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans has been going on continuously since the work began 38 months ago.
“It is a work which continues its viability 96 years after it (the canal) was opened,” said Panama Canal Authority (ACP) Operations Executive Vice President Manuel Benitez.
The canal expansion is expected to be completed by 2014, the waterway’s 100-year anniversary.
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Dredging Today – Panama Canal Expansion Moves Ahead