​Cortizo nominates three directors to the Board of ACP: we expect their ratification by the Legislative

PANAMA - In Brief 16 Feb 2022 by Marco Fernandez

---

On Wednesday, the cabinet approved the nomination of three new directors of the Panama Canal Authority's Board of Directors. The Board consists of eleven members appointed for nine years each, rotating in groups of three, except for the Chairman and the representative of the Legislative Assembly. As we reported last month, these appointments are essential for the agency's decision-making process. In the near term, the ACP must decide upon the multi-million long-term water management projects, the implementation of the toll structure, and the designing of the annual budgets that contemplate the usual labor pressures to increase wages while generating resources to the Central Government.Cortizo's nominations are balanced in gender: two women (Dora Perez Balladares and Laury Melo) are in, and Lourdes Castillo (appointed by Ricardo Martinelli) is out. Still, most of the Board consists of males.Perez Balladares, a UPenn graduate, has been a banker since the late nineties. She is a board member of Banco Nacional de Panamá. Her father, Ernesto, was President of Panamá (1994-1999).Laury Melo, a Purdue graduate, specializes in human resources. She is VP of Social Responsibility and labor relations in the family-owned Melo Group, Panama's largest food processing firm.Along with Perez Balladares and Melo, Cortizo nominated Luis Navas, a professor of international relations at the Universidad de Panamá, and a renowned analyst and writer of the history of Panama-USA relations. Since 2016 he is the Director of the Institute of the Canal. A group of left-leaning organizations promoted his candidacy, but his appointment was the President's preference for a long time.A political analys...