Panama plays a special role in relation to U.S. foreign policy goals in the region. It is strategically at the juncture between two continents and two oceans, and is home to the Panama Canal, perhaps the most critical infrastructure in this hemisphere’s maritime navigation system. It has a special historical relationship with the United States from its separation from Colombia in 1903 to the reversion of the Panama Canal Zone and U.S. military bases to Panamanian jurisdiction in 2000. Since that time, the relationship has changed, but not its strategic importance. From the U.S. perspective, Panama continues to be inextricably linked to its core national interests in security, democracy and economic development.
The United States Agency for the International Development (USAID) in Panama is committed to maintaining and strengthening the ongoing partnership between the United States and Panama in economic growth, democracy and governance.
Summary of U.S. Economic Assistance to Panama
The U.S. assistance program to Panama began in 1940 with technical assistance for the establishment of a rubber plantation. Over the past 65 years, the United States Agency for International Development and its predecessor agencies have provided $1.2 billion in bilateral economic assistance to Panama.
USAID provided in the sixties through most of the eighties substantial financial resources to assist the Government of Panama (GOP) in a range of socioeconomic sectors. Activities financed targeted the health, education, and housing sectors. Also, assistance was aimed at population, nutrition, rural and urban development. Following Operation Just Cause, the focus turned in the nineties to revitalization of the financial sector, humanitarian assistance, conservation of the Canal Watershed, administration of justice, and economic policy reforms. Towards the end of the decade, USAID embarked on a process of reengineering to achieve greater efficiencies and development impacts with increasingly limited resources. Read More/Leer Mas