Obtaining Planning Permission in Panama

Introduction

Obtaining planning permission in Panama can be a time consuming, tortuous and frustrating business, with any number of unpredictable obstacles along the way. When it comes to weaving your way through the intricacies of the planning process, it is hard to establish at the outset what the whole of this process is going to involve. Panamanians are known for being non-confrontational, which is a charming facet of their personality, but often impacts negatively when you are trying to acheive a specific objective. There is a tendency to feed you the bad news little by little, so as not to offend you by confronting you with it all at once. The cynic in you might suggest that this stems from the belief that if you had been appraised of the total costs from the beginning, you might have baulked at ever embarking on the process in the first instance.

However well intentioned or otherwise their methodology might be, it tends to make a mockery of any budgetary forecasts that you might have made. Furthermore, any time scale that you might from the outset have been led to believe, is likely to become extended; if for no other reason than that someone somewhere along the way manages to dream up an obscure technicality or supposed law change which has been enacted since you embarked on the process, and which you didn’t find out about until much later on.

The good news is that as long as you can maintain an advanced sense of humour or indeed sense of the ridiculous then all is not lost.

Indeed, in spite of the aforementioned frustrations, the many hours of work that I put in to this process were actually quite enjoyable, because before I had even purchased the land I was given an introduction to my architect, who has acted as my agent throughout and has proved to be a joy to work with.

Ulises Quiros, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and his staff work with great professionalism, always to an acceptable time scale, and show the unerring attention to detail of people who clearly enjoy their work.