What can I sell?thousands wonder in Panama pushed into informality

A table in which there are masks and grain bags is the improvised trade of Sonora Espinosa, an unemployed 60 -year -old seeking her daily livelihood in the busy central avenue of the capital of Panama.

The December bustle ended and in these first weeks of January the movement in the famous pedestrian, as is also known to Central Avenue, is very slow.

In this boulevard, warehouses coincide, fixed stalls of buhoneros, which are small stores that have a municipal permit, and street and improvised vendors such as Sonora, which shouts "masks" while showing its product.

"It was more moved in December but now, and in the previous months, it has been very sad. There is no money, people only pass (through the boulevard) to clear their mind full of concerns, but the money is not there. There are days that there are days thanThey make me hard and difficult, "the woman said bitterly.

Sonora, who lives with her husband, also sexagenarian and unemployed, run a school cafeteria until pandemic forced in March 2020 at the close of schools in the country.She assured that none of the nine people who worked there now has a formal occupation.

He hopes that with the reopening of schools next March he can resume the cafeteria business, whose untimely closure almost two years ago due to the sanitary emergency caused "a huge loss, more than $ 5,000" in products.

Almost 48 out of 100 people in Panama works in informality

Sonora Espinosa is part of 47.6 % of economically active people who are in the informal economy in Panama, that is, 677,875, according to official data last October.

In 2019, before the pandemic, the informality rate was 44.9 %.In full sanitary emergency, 52.8 %and unemployment at 18.5 %, the highest rate in 20 years, according to official September 2020, the year in which the economy collapsed 17.9 %.

Dependent on services and closely linked to the external sector, the Panamanian economy has begun to recover: 14.9 % between January and September 2021 expanded and unemployment stood at 11.3 % last October.

But for Rolando Gordón, dean of the Faculty of Economics of the State University of Panama (UP), the main country, in this 2022 it will be "difficult" to improve employment levels.

"The employment that is being generated is informal", which impacts the state's finances "because the informal does not pay direct taxes," Gordón told Efe.

What can I sell?Newcomers ask the catchonería

Ricaurte Ruse is a 41 -year -old Panamanian who has more than 16 as an informal seller in a fixed position in the pedestrian.He acknowledges in conversation with Efe that in recent times "there are many people who have ventured into this of the catchoner."

"Many ask me 'What can I sell, what can I do? They are people who are not of this (to sell on the street) but the pandemic has forced them," said Ruse, who with his "dry merchandise" post as they callTo clothing and accessories, he keeps, sometimes he hardly, his wife and three children.

For Mario Antonio Rosh, 50 years old and with more than 30 as an informal seller, "there is a large need, there is hunger in this country" because of the pandemic.

"I know many people who had a job in construction or other work and have been selling buhonería, even street. I know that the need has a dog's face, that many people are sorry for this, but they have had to do itFor his children, and I have seen a quite remarkable increase, "he said.

Raúl Palacios, 43, worked as a contractor in a building "but the pandemic end- 50 % of people working and the others are the street, seeing that it is done. "

"A fixed work is something that is safe for the family and home, which has so many expenses, and sometimes from the catchonería does not come out so much for spending," said Palacios, who asked the government and private company "to look for a solution"Unemployment and informality.

Giovanna Ferullo M.