December 8, 2012
Help Save Panama Bay For Migrating Birds. Audubon Makes It Easy To Get Your Voice Heard.As of May of this year, Panama is allowing development of the upper bay of Panama.
Before then, in 2005, Panama had declared it as a Ramsar site.
That means Panama publicly acknowledged that Panama Bay is a wetland of international importance.
In 2009, Panama confirmed this by declaring the wetland as a National Protected Area.
No longer.
Developers have convinced the government to withdraw the wetland's protected status.
30 species of birds use this wetland on their way south after breeding. In additon, it is important to the life cycle of fish and shell fish and to the ecosystem of the region.
In tandem with that, the government has also relaxed it regulations for mangrove preservation.
“If these wetlands are lost, you break the chain of wetlands shorebirds need for successful migrations”, says Rosabel Miro, Panama Audubon’s executive director.
BirdLife Partner, the Panama Audubon Society, and a coalition of local and international environmental groups including the US National Audubon are taking legal action to restore Panama Bay's protected status.
The Audobon Society makes it easy for you to get your voice heard.
They have a pre-written letter they will send in for you.
Just fill your information. Save the shorebirds of Panama and the World!
For more on conservation of seabirds worldwide, go to this site.
Once you have a resident visa you can go through the border much faster.(photo of the border crossing at Paso Canoas)
Updated: October 2017
The Friendly Nations visa is Panama's best residency program.
Once you get a friendly nations visa, you are then eligible to apply for a work permit. In fact they make it easy to do so.
It is all part of an effort by the Panama government to ease their shortage of skilled workers.
This permanent resident program is referred to as the friendly nations visa because of the language used in the executive order that created it:
"foreign nationals from specific countries that maintain friendly, professional, economic, and investment relationships with the Republic of Panama."
The Friendly Nations visa's legal name is Permanent Residence for Nationals of Specific Countries (NSC). Now you can understand why they came up with a nickname for it.
Since May 2012, when this visa was created, it has been both easier & faster for foreigners to get Panama permanent residency.
There are now 50 countries listed as friendly in the ever expanding list of countries Panama considers as qualifying for this visa. Here they are, in alphabetical order.
Andorra, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, Monaco, Marino, Montenegro, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Paraguay, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Spain, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, United States of America, Uruguay, United Kingdom (Great Britain & Northern Ireland).
FYI, unless you are married to a Panamanian, foreigners are never permitted, even with this visa, to practice as medical & veterinary doctors, attorneys, architects, and engineers. (See 25 forbidden jobs)
The permit covers your dependents, children under 18, relatives with disability, and parents who depend on them.
Dependents can include your spouse and children up to the age of 25, if they are full time university students. You must provide a written letter of responsibility regarding your dependents. In addition, every son or daughter dependent over the age of 18 must provide an authenticated "I'm not married" certificate from their respective country.
After you have filed your applications - with all the required documents - the immigration office will issue a one year temporary residency card (carnet). This temporary card will be replaced by a permanent residency card once the application is approved.
Until February 2017, a obtaining a Friendly Nations Visa earned you a fast track to a work permit. Previously there was a a Presidential Decree ordering Panama’s Ministry of Labor to fast track acceptance of work permits for friendly nations citizens.
But in Februrary Panama made getting a work permit much harder to get. The easy path to work permits for Friendly Nations visa holders got alot harder. Click to read about the changes to the work permit requirements for Friendly Nation Visa holders.
Go here for information on getting a work permit in Panama - with and without this visa.
Panama's Pensionado visa is very popular.
There are 2 things to consider when comparing it to the Friendly Nation Visa
You can learn more about the Pensionado Visa on my site.
If you qualify for a Friendly Nations visa, the process to get a residency permit is easy. So if you were going to marry that young Panamanian only so you could get your residency permit, you may want to reconsider.
You can also explore 3 other Panama resident visa options.
It is hysterical, saddening, and encouraging which is pretty impressive for a 3 minute video.
[leadplayer_vid id="547D13E7497EB"]
Donate and Enjoy.
Betsy and Reyn
March 20, 2012 - plus more recent updates
This park is right on the waterfront in downtown Puerto ArmuellesTwelve years after Chiquita Banana closed its operations in Puerto Armuelles, the former Chiquita company town is once again showing signs of life.
Puerto Armuelles is slowly reemerging as the second most vital city in Chiriqui Province, after David.
David Panama, a little over an hour away, holds the honor of being the regional capital, shopping mecca, and largest town in Chiriqui.
Puerto Armuelles is the second largest town in Chiriqui, with a steadily improving economy and real estate activity.
Investors who bought land for pennies on the dollar while Puerto Armuelles was in its post-Chiquita Banana doldrums, are now looking like investment sages.
Real estate prices in Puerto Armuelles continue to rise.
Although, they are still far below land prices elsewhere in Panama, Costa Rica, or many other places in Central America.
Beach front lots are going for as little as $60/square meter.
The signs of economic recovery in Puerto Armuelles are various and gaining momentum.
The past two years, or so, has seen a notable increase in the number of expat residents.
At present, you can drive through most neighborhoods and see at least one expat construction project underway.
There are two beach areas with multiple house/condominium projects being built.
Two guys from Costa Rica are building a house on the beach in Coronado (located just past Corazon de Jesus), ten minutes north of downtown.
An expat is building his new home in the Porvenir neighborhood
A couple recently bought a house one block back from the beach in the Corazon de Jesus neighborhood.
A woman from Maryland just purchased a beachfront lot in the Cucuy area. She already has an architect drawing up her house plans.
The San Vicente neighborhood of Puerto is experiencing tremendous activity - especially the beachfront in the southern end of San Vicente.
There are actually too many recent purchases in or near Puerto Armuelles to list here. In fact, there is certainly more real estate activity that we have not heard about. There is no clearinghouse of real estate activity in Panama. This lack of full information is both a boon and a bane to Panama real estate investors.
One of the obstacles for people to visit Puerto Armuelles in the past was lack of information about it.
The one downtown hotel of Puerto Armuelles.Then even if you did hear about Puerto, there were very few options for staying overnight.
(FYI: Right now there are only 2 hotel options in Puerto. One is a dive and the other is marginally okay. There is one excellent B&B, but it is often full. But one new hotel and a B&B are on their way!))
In the past, most of Puerto Armuelles’ new foreign residents were friends of current residents.
These folks usually discovered the town while staying at a friend’s house.
Often these people also fell in love with Puerto Armuelles’ laid-back, beach town atmosphere.
However, if you didn’t have a friend in Puerto, it was very unlikely you'd visit Puerto.
Now, with the steady arrival of more expats, there are more chances for “friends of friends” to get a chance to visit.
Even better, the options for staying in Puerto Armuelles is finally increasing.
An expat and San Vicente resident is starting a new hotel, Tsunami Inn.
Tsuami Inn is located at the very south end of the San Vicente neighborhood.
It is a small hotel of cabanas, a rancho where breakfast and drinks will be service, and a swimming pool.
The cabananas will include bed, bath, and kitchen facilities.
Fishing and horse back riding tours will be offered.
According to the owner, Tsunami Inn will open in June.
Soon there will be a B & B in the Las Palmas Neighborhood
There is currently a B&B, called Finca de Oso.
Also there are additional longer-term rentals on the market.
You may also want to stay out on Punta Burica. Click here for lodging options on Punta Burica.
A couple of hundred meters down the beach road from the new hotel project, an expat couple has opened a beautiful new bar/restaurant on the beach.
It is called“El Ojo de Agua” (The Watering Hole) and is brand new.
When I visited, they still didn’t have gas connected to their range.
However, the sea breeze, the view, and the excellent quality of the construction and design of the place were a real treat.
The drinks are outstanding and reasonably priced.
A little further down the beach, heading back to town are several nice bars and restaurants.
Another beachfront restaurant is now under expat management and looks very inviting.
A little further down the road, a Panamanian-owned beach front restaurant has recently put on a second story addition to handle its expanding business.
All this says to visitors that Puerto Armuelles is no longer just a beans and rice place to eat lunch or dinner.
Other signs of growth for Puerto Armuelles are subtle, yet convincing.
You know the old saying, “nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd” ?
As recently as four years ago, a quarter of the store fronts were boarded up;
Unemployment was reportedly over seventy percent. The town was in desperate straights.
Now new businesses are popping up all over the place. The economy has noticeably improved.
At that time, retirees looking at Puerto Armuelles, often decided to move to David, or even Boquete.
This was the case even though one reason they moved to Panama was to live near the beach.
Now these “disappointed” folks who had really wanted to live on the beach, are jumping on the bandwagon and coming to give Puerto Armuelles a second look.
Puerto Armuelless is Attracting Alot More AttentionLocal Puerto expats are bumping into more and more retirees, especially expats from Boquete, who are tired of the cold, and the horizontally blown afternoon rainstorms, and are looking for a place to live in the tropics that is actually warm, and by the ocean.
I ran into one guy from Boquete who came to Puerto to fish for the day.
He said he had had no idea that Puerto Armuelles even existed before.
He had thought Puerto was just a boat launch, rather than a town of over 20,000 inhabitants.
Probably the predominant group checking out Puerto Armuelles are expat transplants from Costa Rica.
If you have ever visited Costa Rica, you know that it truly is a spectacular tropical paradise.
Plus Costa Rica has a longer history of tourists and expat residents and consequently more amenities to serve them.
The big down side to Costa Rica is that along with all its successful development, has come a corresponding rise in living costs.
The cost of everything in Costa Rica, especially when compared to living costs in Panama, is sky high.
Puerto Armuelles is just thirty minutes south of the Costa Rica border crossing at Paso Canoas.
So it makes sense that expats from Costa Rica are stopping by to have a look.
It appears, they like what they see in Puerto.
Housing is a fraction of the cost of comparable properties in Costa Rica.
Plus, lunch here still costs under two dollars, instead of the ten that you might spend in Costa Rica.
Find out for yourself why some people consider Puerto Armuelles to be the only true beach town in Panama.
Drive for 30 minutes on the road going south from Pasa Canoas and you will arrive at Puerto Armuelles.
Or if you are browsing the internet, it seems like every week there is something new being advertised in Puerto.
Who knows? You, too, might just find yourself calling Puerto Armuelles “home”.
But it cannot be denied that Panama has some great real estate investment opportunities as well.
Right now, we have a doozy of an investment opportunity for you!
(Click to See A Solid Puerto Armuelles Investment)
All of our properties are located in the Puerto Armuelles area.
The reason is that Puerto Armuelles is Booming.
The economic climate in Puerto Armuelles has noticeably changed on many fronts.
The Panama government has recently joined the ranks of players that are revitalizing Puerto Armuelles.
Puerto Armuelles is positioned to be the future strategic shipping port and free trade zone for western Panama.
Right now Puerto Armuelles is the 2nd largest city in the very popular Chiriqui province.
It will continue to grow.
Investors are increasingly seen in Puerto Armuelles, looking at both commercial and residential properties.
Photo by Mark Strozier.
January 19, 2012
Economic Freedom Feels GoodPuerto Armuelles has been in economic shackles for years because of the enormous debt owed by Coosemupar.
Coosemupar is a worker cooperative that owns and operates the many banana plantations in the Puerto Armuelles area of Panama.
President Martinelli and members of Coosemupar, signed an agreement that states that the government will:
This is great news for those of us living in Panama, especially in Puerto Armuelles.
Until the early 2000s, Puerto Armuelles was a prosperous and beautiful beach town.
Then Chiquita Banana left.
Chiquita Banana has had a tremendous impact on the physical look and the economy of Puerto Armuelles; for good and for bad.
Chiquita came to town in 1927. It was called United Fruit Company back then.
Chiquita transformed Puerto Armuelles into a unique jewel of a town.
Chiquita built whole neighborhoods of great classic wooden tropical houses on stills, a club house, golf course, and an airport.
Most importantly, Chiquita Banana provided a steady supply of relatively high paid work.
Starting in 2003, when Chiquita Banana left Puerto Armuelles, the town's economy has diminished steadily.
At that time, Chiquita's banana plantations were taken over by a workers' cooperative named COOSEMUPAR.
1) A self-serving (now former) union leadership that treated the cooperative as its own personal property. It was the antics of this same union that prompted Chiquita to leave Puerto Armuelles. It wasn't the only reason, but the union's penchant for debilitating worker strikes was a significant reason for Chiquita's departure from Puerto.
2) Chiquita Banana imposed the biggest obstacle to Coosemupar's success.
As part of the terms for the transfer of operations to Coosemupar, Chiquita required that the bananas from its former plantations be sold exclusively to Chiquita. Not only that, but Chiquita got to decide what to pay for those bananas. Perhaps in revenge for forcing them to leave Puerto, Chiquita set the price they would pay for Coosemupar's bananas way below the market price.
These 2 factors guaranteed the ultimate failure of the cooperative.
The only reason that Coosemupar survived was due to government subsidies.
Unfortunately, given Coosemupar's self-serving leadership, those subsidies were not always used appropriately.
After years of these subsidies, the Panamanian government finally insisted that Chiquita renounce its exclusive banana contract with Coosemupar. Chiquita eventually complied.
Unfortunately, by that time, Coosemupar was a crippled company with massive debt.
No one would buy and take over operations from Coosempar because of its debt.
A new company would have to pay the almost 20 million dollar debt.
In addition the plantation workers were still living on the plantations. Those workers want to be compensated for all their time and efforts in keeping the banana trees alive - usually without pay.
In addition, most prospective buyers wanted the workers removed from the plantations. This was not popular with workers who had lived there for years, sometimes for generations.
Various companies started negotiations to buy the banana plantations from Coosemupar, but they always backed out.
However, soon that will be all behind Puerto Armuelles.
The Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) will sell by public auction the 3,500 hectares of plantation land. MEF will award the land to those companies that will generate the greatest number of jobs.
Using the proceeds from the sale of the plantations, the government will pay the debt own to Social Security for the worker-employer portion of the retirement funds.
In addition, the workers will receive individual titled land upon which to live. This process of awarding land to plantation workers will take 6 months to a year to complete.
This agreement is a great relief to the people of Puerto Armuelles.
A vision for Puerto Armuelles's future is slowly and steadily being implemented.
A construction project to widen the 2 lane to a 4 lane road to Puerto Armuelles will begin soon.
The key reason for the road project is to service the deep container port outside of Puerto Armuelles. Construction of this pier is estimated to begin in conjunction with the road construction project . The future Puerto Armuelles' port will have 217 storage facilities, a deepwater container and future cruise ship port, and a marina.
The Puerto Armuelles road is envisioned as a 4 lane "dry canal" highway connecting Puerto Armulles to Chiriqui Grand on the Caribbean side of Panama. It is anticipated it will have a similar economic effect to the "wet canal" in Panama City
These 2 construction projects along with the government's agreement to cancel the debt of Coosemupar and the workers, shows that the Panama government is through ignoring the once-vibrant town of Puerto Armuelles. The Panama government is now activity promoting the economic revitalization of Puerto Armuelles.
December 2, 2011
Let It Rain! We Love itThe rainy season is going to be a long one this coming year (2012).
That is what was forecast during the Climate Forum held in Mexico recently.
The culprit: La Nina.
Usually, Novemeber is our rainiest month and then it tapers off until we enter the dry season sometime in February.
The folks at the Climate Forum predict that Panama, and all Central American countries, will experience both intense and moderate rains through December and January.
Even in February there will be intermiten rains.
Basically, the weather experts are asserting that La Nina will cause the dry season to come two months late.
We love the rainy season, so it is good news for us.
However, many areas of Panama have already expereinced too much rain. There have been landsides damaging home and causing harm and in some cases deaths.
We were driving down the Inter-Americana between David and Paso Canas the night the bridge went out.
At times driving down the road was like driving across a strong stream.
We think we went over the bridge only a half an hour before it went out.
Let's home there are no more causalities - structures or lives 0 from the anticipated long rainy season.
Of course, they could be wrong about this new forecast for our Panama weather.
Source for forecast: Don Winner of Panama Guide
November 16, 2011
Should Noriega be Sent to Panama?But Noriega may finally serve his sentence for murdering 3 people in Panama during his 6 year military dictatorship.
The United Staes has granted its approval for the extradition of the former Panamanian strongman Manuel Antonio Noriega to Panama.
Noreiga is currently serving a 7 year sentence for money laundering in France. He was sentenced in France in July 2010.
Previously, he served 21 years in the United States for drug trafficking.
Noriega has never served time for the 3 murders he was convicted of during his term as a military dictator of Panama (1983-1989).
An extradition hearing to decide the matter will be held in France on November 23, 2011
The family of one of his victims is trying to block his extradiction. They fear that Noriega will be sentenced to the relative comforts of a house arrest for his murders.
Such a sentence is allowed in Panama due to his advanced age and health condition, as allowed for under Panamanian law.
Noriega is currently 77 years old.
The source of this story is Don Winner at Panama-Guide.com
