* Manuel Ferreira, the director of Panama’s private sector lobby (CCIAP)’s centre for economic studies, said that the country’s GDP growth for the second quarter of 2018 was 3.1%, compared with 5.2% for the same quarter in 2017. Ferreira also noted that foreign direct investment (FDI) was down 13.2% in the first half of 2018 compared with the same period in 2017, to reach US$2.3bn and highlighted uncertainty among the private sector due to the fact that that it is a pre-electoral year. Yet Ferreira expressed confidence that Panama's economy – which is already the fastest growing in Central America – would pick up growth, forecasting GDP growth of 5% for 2019.
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