Water permits are a sham

PANAMA. The law that regulates water resources is unconstitutional, according to the National Environmental Agency (ANAM).

Silvano Vergara, ANAM’s new administrator of Water Resources, said that he will be asking the Supreme Court to look into this matter.

Water concessions are granted by ANAM and the process takes two months.

Over the last ten years the State has granted 764 concessions, the majority of them located in Chiriquí province.

The government annually receives two cents per each liter of water, but the amount of money depends on figures given by the companies exploiting the water concessions.

The problem is that the authorities do not for certain if these enterprises are over exploiting water resources or if they are complying with the terms of the concession.

The government has been very aggressively tackling water concessions and trying to put them in order to obtain “fair payments”, but there is still a long way to go.

Last year, the International Water Tribunal found Panama guilty of giving water concessions without carrying out a census of all its water resources.