Economy

THE COMPANY: Grupo Melo is an industry leader in a variety of agro-industrial activities across Panama, with a historical focus on poultry products. The company is publicly traded, listed on the Panama Stock Exchange (Bolsa de Valores de Panamá, BVP) under the ticker symbol MELO.

The overall unemployment rate in Panama increased from 4.1% in 2013 to 4.8% in 2014. This included 3.5% (or 61,616 people) who were openly unemployed and an additional 1.4% (or 24,289 people) assessed as being in the “hidden unemployed”, according to figures published by the National Statistics Agency. Nearly two-thirds of the absolute increase in the number of jobless...

Panama is a small and open economy in which investment is normally well in excess of savings. In 2014 the current account deficit amounted to some $5.3bn, or 12% of GDP, according to the IMF.

Diversified across various sectors, over recent years Panama’s economy has been notable for its resilience in face of problems in key trading partners such as Venezuela and comparatively rapid growth in a regional context. In 2014 Panama’s GDP was $43.8bn, while its per capita income reached $11,147, according to the IMF. Panama’s real GDP expanded by 7.8% annually over...

The ASEAN Economic Community’s (AEC) launch in 2015 is likely to have an impact on the region’s insurance industry. As the single market emerges, financial services will become borderless, products from one country will be sold in others, labour will be portable and companies will branch out into markets outside their home jurisdictions. However, the method and pace of...

Despite the talk of restrictions on foreign investment in insurance in Indonesia, international companies remain interested and active in the sector. A number of significant deals were completed in 2015, with others in the works, suggesting that the market’s potential outweighs the risk of ownership limits being put in place. For local insurance companies, capital pressures...