Panama Extends Metro Operator Contract

The Board of Directors of Metro de Panamá, S.A. authorized the management to request the Council of Ministers for approval of an exceptional procedure for contracting the services of SONDA S.A. until October 31, 2026, for a sum of B/.8,262,665.21. This move aims to buy time while the payment and financing plan for the public project is finalized and the equipment is renewed. The current equipment is no longer supported with technical assistance or spare parts due to technological obsolescence. However, it was announced that in parallel, work has been advanced on drafting the terms of reference for the selection procedure to contract a new operator for the financial administration and fare collection system for a period of ten years. The Council of Ministers approved the contract between Metro de Panamá, S.A. (MPSA) and the company Sociedad Nacional de Procesamiento de Datos, S.A. (SONDA, S.A.) for the fare collection service, financial administration, and maintenance of validation and fare collection equipment on lines 1 and 2 of the Panama Metro. The contract, to be made through an exceptional procedure, is for a sum of B/.11,085,673.14. This all comes after a rigorous analysis process determined that the most advisable course of action was to extend the validity of the exceptional procedure by six months and to add partial equipment renewal (validators, servers, and 'switches'). Consequently, MPSA requested a new economic proposal from SONDA that included the partial equipment renewal.