Representatives of the Ministry of the Presidency presented before the Budget Commission of the National Assembly a budget transfer request to finance a consultancy for the Panama–David–Border railway project.
During the presentation, the Vice Minister of the Presidency, Virna Luque, ceded the floor to Diego Calderón, a member of the technical team, who detailed that the consultancy, amounting to 561,724 dollars, is part of the work carried out by the National Railway Secretariat. The objective is to develop an economic-financial model that allows projecting the behavior of the railway system in the long term.
The Minister of Economy and Finance, Aurelio Mejía, stated that the 11 million dollars requested for 2025 were indeed executed, although redistributed to various consultancy services linked to the project. These new resources are for additional studies required to complete a project considered a priority within the government program.
Some deputies questioned whether those resources were executed and why new funds were now being requested for a consultancy that, in theory, should already have been included. Representatives of the National Railway Secretariat explained that while tenders and partial contracts were carried out, some components of the study—such as the financial model—could not be finalized due to delays in the endorsement processes.
In fact, on May 29, 2025, the Minister of the Presidency, Juan Carlos Orillac, appeared before the Assembly to justify a budget transfer of over 11 million dollars for studies related to the same project. The minister explained that the funds would be used to initiate a series of consultancies, technical studies, and key administrative processes. This will include the analysis of externalities and financing scenarios, including possible public-private partnership schemes, using inputs from the master plan and ongoing demand studies.
