11: The Mining Cycle

On a sunny morning in 1971, I was enjoying breakfast beside the pool at the Intercontinental Hotel in Panama City. At the time, I was involved in preparing the port and coastal shipping element of Panama’s new economic development plan. My responsibility was to prepare long-term economic forecasts for various agricultural and industrial sectors in different regions of the country so that infrastructure investment could be prioritised accordingly. As I opened the local newspaper, the lead story was the discovery of what was then believed to be one of the world’s largest copper deposits, a project now known as Cobre Panama. The article expressed confidence that a large mine would shortly be established that would deliver thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in export revenues for Panama.