To date, Panama and Costa Rica seem to be doing a good job in recent weeks in reducing the number of deaths from COVID-19, as well as in the percentage of the population vaccinated, compared to the rest of the countries in the Central American region.
However, it is expected that the same region will have 80% of its population vaccinated between the third quarter of 2021 and the second quarter of 2022. To be exact, if the current course of vaccination is maintained, Panama would be 80% the November 10, 2021, Costa Rica on January 30, 2022 and Guatemala on May 17, 2022.
Regarding Central America’s economic recovery in terms of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the Frontierview study noted that all three countries will do so, but Panama will reach almost double digits. The case of Guatemala will be particular because its growth has been thanks to remittances and exports.
In any case, it is expected that of all the Central American nations, Panama will be the last to recover the economic levels it had before the pandemic, recovering them in 2024, taking into account the historical drop in its GDP in 2020, the study concludes. All this will depend on how they manage to stop the infections, the amount of vaccinated population and the possibility of the country to open doors to tourism, an area on which the 3 countries depend.
Transition to the recovery phase with resilience and agility
Many organizations have struggled to adapt to the new environment. However, there are strategies and tools that can help them move towards the new job reality effectively. “Definitely the biggest contribution that the technology industry has made to help in the pandemic has been the cloud.
Thanks to the cloud it has been possible to carry out teleworking. Those companies that still do not have all their infrastructure or a partial part in a cloud have not been able to be so flexible with teleworking. If the pandemic has taught us anything, it is that for remote work to be successful, the backend has to be robust. Only the cloud can give us this”, point out experts in the field.
The key to staying afloat for many companies in the region has been resilience and agility. In this pandemic, the big winner has been the cloud. We have seen how, thanks to technology and very wisely, companies have successfully navigated these troubled waters.
For their success regional companies have identified the following actions:
Embrace flexible work
Those businesses that moved quickly to embrace remote work met the challenges of the pandemic better than those that required attending a physical workplace. Having at least a portion of your workforce virtually allows efforts to ensure business continuity to focus on areas where it is impossible to adopt these measures.
For both cases, business leaders must explore more flexible arrangements with their employees in order to meet their needs and ensure organizational productivity. Rethinking working models is not an option that you may or may not take, but basically an obligation in the current context.
Optimize your supply chain
This pandemic demonstrated how easily supply chains can be disrupted. From this, instead of looking only for improvements in the final results, companies should also focus on designing adaptable supply chains based on the following strategies: generate redundancy, analyze scenarios and be flexible to changes.
Create an income advantage
According to a McKinsey study, resilient companies are those that move before everyone else during a crisis or recession: “They came in ahead, dived less, and came out with guns on fire.” The business context is and will continue to be uncertain, but if the circumstances are foreseeable, the effects are likely to be minor. The points to consider to create an income advantage are: create a safety cushion and focus on growth.
Managing this new stage of the pandemic, in which many companies are adjusting to the post-pandemic environment, can be difficult if you do not have the technological tools necessary to solve the complexity of the processes.
