The country remains behind even Switzerland in sharing tax information with foreign governments searching for citizens who are hiding income.

“There is less and less tolerance, less and less patience” for that, Gurria says. “Now, 120 nations around the world are [sharing tax information]. Sixty of them have already signed, including Switzerland, to migrate towards automatic exchange of information, which is the standard we are going to have in the world in the near future. Panama should be part of the collective.”

Panamax

That the Panama Canal would one day become obsolete was clear not long after it opened in 1914: Even then, U.S. Navy ships narrowly fit through the waterway. The maximum size of a ship that could pass through the locks came to be called Panamax. By 1996, three years before the U.S. handed control of the canal to Panama, the first post-Panamax ships were in use. Since then, two more generations of new, larger ships have been placed in service.

Even the expanded locks won’t fit the largest of them, but those are specialty ships intended for shorter routes between Asia and Europe. The New Panamax ships, as those designed around the dimensions of the expanded canal are called, will be more than sufficient to alter the face of Asia-to-America shipping.

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