The Council of Cabinet approved Resolution No. 146-25, authorizing an exceptional procedure contract between Metro de Panamá, S.A. (MPSA) and the company Sociedad Nacional de Procesamiento de Datos, S.A. (SONDA, S.A.), for the service of fare collection, financial administration, and maintenance of fare validation and payment equipment on lines 1 and 2 of the Metro de Panamá, for the amount of B/. 11,085,673.14. This came after the Board of Directors of Metro de Panamá, S.A. authorized the management before the Council of Cabinet to authorize the exceptional procedure for contracting SONDA S.A.'s services until October 31, 2026, for the amount of B/. 8,262,665.21. However, it was announced that in parallel, progress has been made in drafting the terms of reference for the selection procedure to hire a new operator for the financial administration and fare collection system for a term of ten (10) years. This follows a rigorous analysis process that determined that the most advisable course of action was to extend the term of the exceptional procedure by six (6) months and add partial equipment renewal (validators, servers, and 'switch') to: (1) buy time while the public act's payment and financing plan is finalized and (2) renew equipment that no longer has technical support or spare parts due to technological obsolescence. Thus, MPSA requested a new economic proposal from SONDA that included the partial renewal of equipment.
