Two views of Panama expressed.

Panama continues to be described as two different worlds. One is the prosperous, growing urban service sector. The other is the world of rural poverty and underemployment. One estimate recently said that underemployment in Panama was 47 percent.

The dichotomy persists in forecasts of the country's economic fortunes.

Recently, the consulting firm INDEA predicted that Panama's GDP would grow 9 percent in 2005, but hastily revised its estimate downward - to 7.1 percent - when government figures said that the economy would grow 6.8 percent. Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), forecasting from a more distant perspective, says that Panama's economy will grow 3.7 percent in 2005

Who is right?

According to recent polls summarized by the online newspaper Panama News, none of the above. The Website said that Panamanians regard the rosy predictions with significant suspicion, saying that social security and higher taxes are introducing barriers to economic growth unseen by macroeconomic statistics.

Meanwhile, job cuts in the public sector have made matters worse. The country's president trimmed some 8,000 jobs from the what he characterized as an artificially swollen bureaucracy.

Indeed, in a CID/Gallup poll earlier in the year, 56 percent of the Panamanian respondents said that unemployment was their chief concern, followed by crime, 17 percent, and corruption 8 percent. Panama's unemployment rate in 2004 was estimated at 12.6 percent by the CIA's World Factbook. This same source also said that in 1999 37 percent of the population was living below the poverty line.