Venezuela was in 2023 the main buyer of the ZLC with 13.8 percent of the re-exports, followed by Panama with 13.3 % and Nicaragua with 7.8 percent.
The suspension of diplomatic relations between Panama and Venezuela following the post-election crisis in the South American country has not yet affected bilateral trade, which has been maintained, Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino said Thursday.
“Yesterday (Wednesday) the Foreign Minister (Panama, Javier Eduardo Martínez-Acha) told me that, for now, the trade flow has not been mostly affected” by the bilateral diplomatic crisis, said the Panamanian head of state during his weekly press conference.
The Columbus Free Zone (ZLC), the largest in the Americas and located in the Caribbean of Panama, supplies the Venezuelan market, highly dependent on imports in the face of the practically destruction of the productive apparatus and the local currency, the bolivar, under the Chavista model of the last 25 years.
Venezuela was in 2023 the main buyer of the ZLC with 13.8 percent of the re-exports, followed by Panama with 13.3 %, Nicaragua with 7.8 % and Costa Rica with 6.7 %, according to the free zone statistics.
Mulino put diplomatic relations with Venezuela on hold on July 29 following the proclamation of Nicolas Maduro as re-elected president in the elections held a day earlier without the National Electoral Council (CNE) of that country presenting the minutes that support it.
The Venezuelan opposition led by Edmundo González published online more than 80 percent of the minutes provided by its polling witnesses and claims to have won the presidential elections widely, a position supported by several Latin American countries, including Panama.
In this context and also on July 29, Maduro announced the temporary suspension of commercial flights to and from Panama and the Dominican Republic, countries both frequently used by Venezuelans and citizens of other nationalities to make air connections in the face of the low offer of direct flights to and from Venezuela.
According to data from Tocumen International Airport, Panama’s main airport and a regional connection center, between the first half of this year 311,624 passengers mobilized between the Central American country and Venezuela.
Newspaper reports citing the Venezuelan Airline Association said earlier this month that air tickets in Venezuela have increased by 300 percent since Maduro’s government suspended flights to several countries, including Panama.
Between Panama and Venezuela “there is commercial flow (…) international flights of course have been affected but the airline (Panama flag) Copa has sought alternatives and there are, somehow (through a) third country, which is attended to that square whose passengers have no sail at the burial,” Mulino said.
“You know there are ways to trade, so yesterday the chancellor told me that for now the trade flow (between Panama and Venezuela) has not been mostly affected. Of course it’s a problem to be like this, but that’s not Panama’s fault,” Mulino added.
This article has been translated after first appearing in Panama America