Panama's boom helps drive Nicaragua canal dreams

PANAMA CITY (AP) — Curundu used to be a warren of ramshackle wooden houses and reeking open sewers, one of Panama City's most notorious refuges for street gangs and drug dealers.

Then, three years ago, the government tore down the shacks and built a bustling new neighborhood of concrete apartment buildings, freshly paved streets, basketball courts and fields with artificial turf.

"We live more decently here now. People see a prettier neighborhood, kids playing soccer," said Ronny Murillo, a 45-year-old ex-convict who helped build one of the billions of dollars in projects made possible by an economic boom driven largely by the $5.25 billion expansion of the Panama Canal. Behind him, enormous cranes loomed over a skyline that has been transformed by dozens of new skyscrapers, many filled with luxury apartments, high-end stores and fashionable boutiques.

In a little more than five years, Panama has slashed its unemployment rate by two-thirds and nearly tripled the rate of government spending as the double-digit growth of the canal-fueled boom has made it the hemisphere's hottest economy. Just to the north, Nicaragua has watched years of slower growth fail to move it out of its position as the hemisphere's second-poorest nation, after Haiti.