Panamá sin su canal: una reflexión sobre la dependencia de un Hub Logístico

Abstract

When someone talks about Panama, almost everyone thinks of the same thing: the Canal. I, too, arrived in Panama City with that same idea—of a country that exists thanks to a strip of water barely eighty kilometers wide. During the week of June 7–14, I had the opportunity to participate in the Periplo Internacional, my college’s degree program, which combined technical visits in the mornings with a certificate program in logistics and international trade at the Inter-American University of Panama in the afternoons. It was there—amidst locks, administrative offices, and classes on logistics corridors—that I began to ask myself a question that almost no one considers: What would happen to Panama if the Canal stopped functioning, even if only partially? And this is not a baseless hypothetical question. In 2023 and 2024, something similar already happened, albeit on a smaller scale: a historic drought forced the Panama Canal Authority to reduce the number of daily transits from more than thirty ships to just eighteen (Panama Canal Authority, 2024; Analdex, 2023), and that directly impacted the country’s revenue. That real-life episode ultimately served as the basis for this reflection. There are at least two perspectives on Panama’s dependence on the Canal. The first and most widely held view maintains that Panama is practically synonymous with the Canal: without this interoceanic waterway, the country would lose its economic raison d’être. The second, according to figures from organizations such as the IDB (IDB Invest, n.d.), argues that Panama has built a logistics, financial, and commercial cluster around the Canal—including the Colon Free Zone, international banking, ports, and tourism—which, although it arose thanks to the geographical advantage provided by the Canal, no longer depends on it entirely. 4 My position, after what I experienced that week, lies somewhere between these two perspectives, though I lean more toward the first. I believe that, while Panama has diversified its economy, that diversification remains anchored, almost entirely, to the existence of the Canal. The objective of this essay is to support that position based on what I learned in the certificate program in Logistics and International Trade at the Inter-American University of Panama and during the international mobility component of the Periplo, supplemented by documentary data reviewed subsequently.