As de­mand for trav­el to Pana­ma con­tin­ues to grow, Pana­man­ian car­ri­er Co­pa Air­lines plans to in­tro­duce ad­di­tion­al ser­vice be­tween Pana­ma and T&T. Start­ing Ju­ly 7th, the air­line will in­tro­duce two ad­di­tion­al af­ter­noon fre­quen­cies on Mon­days and Fri­days. In Au­gust, the air­line will in­tro­duce a third ad­di­tion­al af­ter­noon fre­quen­cy on Wednes­days, bring­ing the to­tal num­ber of week­ly flights up to 10. The air­line will use its Boe­ing 737-800 and small­er Boe­ing 737-700 fleet for these ser­vices, al­though this can be ad­just­ed based on de­mand.

Pana­ma has been a pop­u­lar con­nec­tion point for trav­ellers us­ing Co­pa Air­lines’ ex­ten­sive net­work at Toc­u­men In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port (PTY), but the air­line has al­so seen suc­cess with its stopover pro­gram. The stopover pro­gram al­lows tick­et­ed pas­sen­gers to stay in Pana­ma for up to sev­en days with no ad­di­tion­al air­fare costs. Ac­cord­ing to Co­pa of­fi­cials, many use it to shop in Pana­ma.

While Pana­ma may be known for shop­ping, Pana­ma’s Am­bas­sador to T&T, Diomedes Her­a­clio Car­les Cleghorn, tells Guardian Me­dia his coun­try is more than just a shop­ping des­ti­na­tion. With 16 free trade zones in Pana­ma, Cleghorn is look­ing at the pos­si­bil­i­ty of com­mer­cial part­ner­ships. “As every­body states, when I see them is that they love the shop­ping, but the shop­ping brings oth­er things. You could prob­a­bly have a free zone here…and a part­ner­ship with the biggest com­pa­nies [in Pana­ma] that can help,” he said.

Pres­i­dent of Greater San Fer­nan­do Area Cham­ber of Com­merce (GS­FCC) Ki­ran Singh tells Guardian Me­dia his mem­ber­ship al­ready im­ports from the Pana­man­ian free trade zones and oth­er dis­trib­u­tors. And they want to ex­pand the trade op­por­tu­ni­ties be­tween the two coun­tries. Among the prod­ucts T&T cur­rent­ly ex­ports to Pana­ma are tis­sues and ce­re­al prod­ucts, but Singh be­lieves more prod­ucts can be ex­port­ed to the Pana­man­ian mar­ket. He says, “We have per­sons who are in­volved in so­lar pan­el ac­ces­sories, so we’re look­ing at the green en­er­gy as­pect, as well as some of the ac­ces­sories that go with per­son­al wear that we could use, what we call in­dige­nous to this coun­try, to ex­port to Pana­ma. And we look to see how leather­craft, the slip­pers, and those kinds of things that could ap­peal to the Pana­man­ian peo­ple in a Caribbean con­text is what we’re look­ing at.”

But whether im­port­ing or ex­port­ing, Singh says the lack of for­eign ex­change re­mains a chal­lenge. He says the cham­ber is work­ing with the new ad­min­is­tra­tion to get what he calls “more eq­ui­table dis­tri­b­u­tion” for SMEs. In the mean­time, Singh be­lieves T&T needs to use its ge­o­graph­ic lo­ca­tion to its ben­e­fit. He says, “Trinidad and To­ba­go is well poised as a tran­ship­ment point. We are just 7 miles from South Amer­i­ca. Venezuela is our clos­est neigh­bour, so we can cer­tain­ly see a lot of ben­e­fits with South-to-South trade. We do a lot of South-to-North trade, [but] it’s time to look at what’s south of the bor­der and how that could ben­e­fit us as a coun­try. Adding, “We de­pend too much on the north for sup­plies. Let’s look to oth­er coun­tries where we can ben­e­fit, maybe get com­pet­i­tive pric­ing on a bet­ter scale, es­pe­cial­ly with the forex chal­lenges that we face.”

For the time be­ing, Am­bas­sador Cleghorn says that for those look­ing to in­vest a lot in the Latin Amer­i­can mar­kets, the Pana­ma hub is the right choice. “The peo­ple here that come to see me want to in­vest, but they want to in­vest big,” he said. “I’ve had meet­ings with sev­er­al busi­ness­men that I’m sell­ing to have an of­fice, a re­gion­al of­fice. If they want to go big and they want to ex­port to the whole [of] Latin Amer­i­ca, they can use our hub,” Cleghorn added. Co­pa Air­lines cur­rent­ly of­fers car­go in the bel­ly of the air­craft on the pas­sen­ger flights it runs be­tween T&T and Pana­ma, with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a freighter air­craft be­ing added if the need aris­es.

Both men were speak­ing at the Pana­ma Shop­ping Tourism Car­a­van held at the Hilton Trinidad & Con­fer­ence Cen­tre last week. The event was host­ed by Prom­tur and Co­pa Air­lines.