Electricity use grew 6% last year -- four times the U.S. growth rate -- which has strained the country's tiny power grid.
Last month, the government cut the workday and limited air-conditioner use to conserve electricity, the costliest in the region.
To close the deficit, the government plans to build 24 hydro- and thermal power plants. But Indian groups in the rainy western part of the country where most of the plants are planned complain that the projects will inundate their farms and force their displacement.
Roughly 6% of Panamanians live without running water. Residents of poor barrios have taken to the streets to protest the lack of infrastructure.
"Since the 1980s, there has been no centralized planning, and that's the basis of the crisis we see today," said Lucia Lasso of the Alliance for Conservation and Development environmental group.
Thanks to a $380-million loan from the Inter-American Development Bank, the capital at least is getting a treatment facility for the raw sewage that flows out into the ocean right in front of deluxe high-rises.
Panama is also taking dramatic, if belated, measures to deal with traffic by building nine overpasses in and around the capital and by plopping down a 2-mile-long highway called the Coastal Beltway on the capital's Pacific shoreline.
As hectic as development is now, economic activity is only going to intensify starting next year, when the contract for the biggest piece of the canal expansion, the $3.5-billion deal to design and build new canal locks, is awarded.
Jose Manuel Bern, the owner of one of Panama's leading real estate development firms, said San Francisco-based engineering firm Bechtel, one of four international bidders vying for the locks contract, has told him that if it wins, it will need 500 apartments for its employees, housing that will have to be built.
"It's only going to get better," Bern said with a smile.
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chris.kraul@latimes.com
