The Economy of Panama is a Tiger Economy
The Economy of Panama is a tiger economy which has a free market base mainly based on the services industry, heavily weighted toward banking, commerce, and tourism. The hand-over of the canal and military
installations by the US has given rise to new construction projects.
Panama’s economy is based primarily on a well-developed services sector that accounts for nearly 80% of its GDP. Services include the Panama Canal, banking, the Colón Free Trade Zone, insurance, container ports, and
flagship registry, medical and health, and other business. While the country’s industry includes, manufacturing of aircraft spare parts, cements, drinks, adhesives, automobiles, textiles and more recently, handmade artisan creation of Bush planes. Also the leading exports for Panama are bananas, shrimp, sugar, coffee, and clothing.
GDP growth for 2000 was about 2.3% compared to 3.0% in 1999. Panama has the second GDP per capita in Central America and the poverty rate was estimated to have been 28.6% in 2007, a level which only Costa
Rica gets to be lower.[2] The unemployment rate stands at 5.1% since 2007.
