Prima Panama Project update
July 24, 2005
Introduction:
Although I have been in contact with many of you on a regular basis, I have not put out an official update since March. It has been a little over 3 months since my last update and much has taken place in Panama politics and in our progress with Prima Panama. I continue to leave Boquete each Monday or Tuesday and spend at least 4 days each week in the City. Most of that time is spent working with business leaders and government officials. We have made tremendous progress on all fronts and I have made a brief of each aspect of this in the segments below.
Panama retirement in the news:
Panama continues to enjoy being in the spotlight as the best country in which to retire outside the U.S.. I am sure many of you have seen the story in Fortune magazine this month naming Boquete as one of the top five places to retire in the world. We are expecting another AARP article within the next month as their writer spent several days with me last month working on a story. I have had an interview with U.S. News and World report that will present a country profile in October where retirement in Panama will be featured. International living continues to promote Panama as the best place as well.
Projects for our Collection:
We have been very successful in attracting new developers into the program. We receive regular requests for meetings with more developers who have heard of our plan and want to be considered to enter the program. We have decided it is to all of our best interest to bring in some various levels of city projects along with projects in various parts of the country. I am amazed at all of the new lifestyle projects in the planning stage by various developers both from abroad and from Panama.
We have had to begin working with most of the developments to improve their websites, as most of the sites are not particularly focused on our market. We do not expect them all to be ready when we launch the program but we should see them improve over the next few months.
Residential Billing System
Our residential billing system (RBS) is being tested in Valle Escondido now and we expect it to be ready for other projects to begin using in the next few months. This system allows anyone who buys property in our collection of projects to pay their monthly bills via an online Internet system. This great simplifies the collection and payment of monthly fees associated with primary and vacation homes in foreign countries where bill paying can be very difficult. The property management and exchange modules are under development and should be available in the first quarter of 2006. Many thanks go to Chris Zollinger and Ramon Hurado for the development of this great product.
Sponsors:
Douglas Choy of Global Branding Group has been very busy with our sponsors and partners. He has had a 100% closing rate with all of the travel sponsors. All of the major hotels, car rentals, airlines and other travel related businesses have given us at least a two for the price of one for our first time travelers to Panama and great discounts ongoing for our members when they move to the country. Our Passport website should be available in the next few weeks showing all of the sponsors and discounts available to our Prima Members.
Partners:
Our Prima Partners are companies offering services and products where we offer a rebate to our members. The partners offer us a rebate as well for bringing the clients to them. We have brought a number of them such as legal firms, mortgage banks, financial services, insurances etc. These will represent the best companies in Panama and we should have all aspects of living in Panama with great discounts and benefits for Prima members. These partners will be on our Passport website within the next two weeks.
Websites:
We have three companies working on various aspects of our websites and all them are working hard to meet our August 15th deadline. The Prima Passport site, which explains and lists all of the great discounts and benefits our members receive is almost completed. We are now entering all of the sponsor and partner information onto the templates for the Passport site. The Passport administration site is under development and is expected to be ready on schedule. This site handles all the ecommerce part of the business. The Prima Affiliate site which is the backbone of the Passport sales and real estate commission tracking system is in testing now along with the administration part of the program and should be ready by August 15th.
Our Prima Panama site, which explains about the great aspects of living in Panama and offers our collection of lifestyle projects is well under way and should be ready within the next 30 days.
Infomercials:
Steve Arthur has been very busy the last two months interviewing people all over the country, from the mountains to the beaches and every place in between. He returns to the city next week for more interviews and editing. He has over 20 hours of interviews. You can see the commercial segments on our PrimaPanama web site. Steve tells me the new interviews he has made will really add more information and credibility to the spots. We will be offering the magazine subscription, the Prima Passport to Paradise and special Prima travel packages throughout the commercials. We expect to begin to test market these commercials in various U.S. cities in September.
Magazine:
We have hired a company owned by Tito Barria to edit and publish our Paradise magazine. Mimi Nordstrom, the publisher of Agenda has received a contract from us to do the graphic design, layout and printing of the magazine. They have begun working on the editorial content and coordinating with the various writers, photographers, sponsors and partners. We have added a retirement planning section in the magazine, which allows anyone to participate in the program by advertising services and products in this section. We have a deadline of September 1st to get the material into Mimi’s hands so she can have adequate time to do the layouts and get the first edition printed and out by November 1st.
Government lobbying and business organization support:
This is an area I have spent a great amount of my time working on. I have regular meetings with government officials in the Tourism and Commerce ministries as well as private business organizations. I had over an hour meeting last week with President Martin Torrijos regarding the Prima program. He says he understands the importance of this industry to the country and has committed to making it of national interest. He has been extremely busy with social issues such as the Social Security and the Canal expansion the last few months but sees this industry of foreign retirement of equal importance.
Herman Bern, a major developer in the country, brought together 26 of the major developers in the country to meet with the President last Tuesday morning and over two hours he heard from all of them about the importance they place on this type of foreign investment into Panama. I was honored to be the only foreigner invited to this important meeting. The construction industry also had a meeting with the President on Thursday where he heard again the importance they all place on this industry.
We have meetings this next week with the Commerce department regarding the law we have proposed, granting tax benefits to promoters and developers of real estate projects that focus on this market. The commerce department has put together a commission to study the law and on Tuesday we have our first session. We consider the law of great importance in giving the developers the impetus to build the developments for us to promote.
I had meetings the last two weeks with the Chamber of Commerce of Panama and received commitments from their board of directors to support our program. The President of the Chamber has offered whatever assistance we require in moving the plan forward. They are a very powerful group in Panama representing all the major companies doing business here. We have had a similar response from the American Chamber of Commerce who sponsored a large meeting for us last month where we presented the Prima program to over 125 of its members. You can see information on this event on our website.
We had a meeting with all of the various Chapter heads of APEDE, which is a group that advances economic development throughout the country. They have also offered us complete support for our program.
We had a meeting with the ACOBER, which is the association of real estate sales companies in Panama and have come to an agreement where we will pay their members an additional commission for properties they sell within our collection when using the passport. This organization has about 500 members and they were concerned about our program when they first heard about it. They have accepted our proposal and have expressed their complete support for the program.
I have had several meetings with environmental groups that have proved fruitful. It is our desire to work with these groups in protecting the ecosystem of the country, which is why so many people consider coming to Panama in the first place. Our goal is to have these organizations work with us to review developments and help with environmental issues they see as a concern. We would donate a portion of our sales to their cause and we would receive their stamp of approval in return.
Public Relations:
Bati Elta and her team at Stratego continue to work hard keeping Prima in the minds and, we hope hearts, of the Panamanian public. We have had many positive news articles come out this last month. You can see their complete report in our document section of the PrimaPanama.com website.
Bati has come up with an innovative plan for our continued public relations campaign, which we will begin in August. We will be having meetings with business groups and government officials in 7 of the provinces of the interior of the country. Our goal in this is to bring the awareness of the value of this type of industry to their attention. We have speakers such as Ruben Lachmen, who produced the economic study and Curro Montenegro, head of APYME and myself. APYME is the equivalent of the Small Business Administrational the U.S.. We expect this to have a positive impact in bringing the public pressure to bear on the legislature when the law we propose comes up in the congress later this year.
Prima People:
We continue to bring very good people into our organization. Beside the number of new outsourced companies we work with we have added Ivonne Fitzgerald as my personal assistant and administrator. Ivonne has had a high profile career working with the General of Southern Command until the handover and the last President of Panama as her personal assistant until the end of her administration. She continues to have a full workload while working with this fast paced capitalist executive.
Prima Offices:
We have opened our temporary offices in the Mossack and Fonseca offices in Panama city. We will operate here until our new offices are completed in the new Bern office building which is expected to be in November.
Launch date:
We expect to have the Internet Passport program launch and infomercials ready for September and the Paradise magazine ready for November. We have a lot to do in the next few months and we are all working hard to make this a reality. We thank you all for your continued support.
Please feel free to contact me with any questions and /or suggestions.
Sam Taliaferro
President
PrimaPanama S.A.