EDITORIAL: Committed to Green Logistics

Since its foundation, the Logistics Business Council has maintained a common thread that represents the esprit de corps that today brings together these 23 trade organizations from different sectors related to or interested in the development and growth of our logistics hub, first as a transfer hub, then transversally, and now focused on adding value. This decade of hard work has been and is the north that leads us today to COEL:

Committed to celebrate our tenth anniversary of foundation, united, strong and confident in the future we are forging. We have passed a litmus test facing a global pandemic. The actors of the logistics industry, large and small, green logistics from all areas, worked continuously and uninterruptedly to guarantee the supply of goods and products that kept the shops stocked, thus ensuring the peace and tranquility of the population during the months more difficult and leaving the country high as a transit center for goods for world trade. Panama and its logistics sector have been exemplary and from the Logistics Business Council I cannot help but thank each of our unions and their members for having maintained high performance standards and supporting the COEL in its daily search for solutions to avoid shortages. , disruptions in the national and international logistics chain, to ensure that goods do not stop reaching their destinations, that health products reach all Panamanians and that international trade that uses our country as a logistics platform does not stop. Today, we begin a new stage. As an interoceanic maritime and logistics cluster, with all the transversal elements and actors in the sector, framed in the Logistics Strategy 2030, we must analyze and reflect on the points in which we have consolidated in the achievement of our purposes, in those in those of us who have fallen behind and are pending and drawing, with long lights, new objectives and goals, emphasizing that it is imperative to promote and develop a logistics culture as a country that allows us to work together and united for the growth of Panama. To this end, it is necessary to work and capture COEL’s Logistics Vision 2050, with the support and participation of all the talent that our member unions have, and reinforce the path of joint work between the Government and the Private Sector, in order to materialize the same in our National Logistics Strategy 2050 that guides our courses as a sector and as a nation. Our country provides services, implements strategies and technology, serves markets and industries, we exchange goods and transport them. Every commercial movement begins and ends with a logistics movement of land cargo transport. Along the way, ships, planes, railroads and trucks move daily to fulfill their destiny thanks to the continuous work of men and women who from Panama attend world trade. New times make it necessary not only to meet the milestones set by our National Logistics Strategy so that operations are increasingly automated, simple and transparent, but now they also require that logistics processes be friendly to the environment, thus prioritizing Green Logistics projects that contribute to this new comprehensive vision of the country that we all want. Committed to this issue, COEL has assumed, together with the Panamanian Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture and the World Organization of Cities and Logistics Platforms, the organization of the Seventh (7th) World Forum of Cities and Logistics Platforms, the benchmark event at World Cup on this topic, to be held from October 18 to 20 in Panama City. From now on we invite you to join this important event that will have the participation of guests and exhibitors from more than 40 countries, making our country the central axis on these issues. To conclude, I would like to welcome you to CONEXIÓN - the COEL Magazine - which, starting today, will offer a dynamic option for the exchange of information, data and opinions among those of us who are interested in logistics, in all its forms, and which will serve to show the strengths of our sector, as a facilitator of the exchange of ideas between the members of our guild and as a way of exposing it to the world logistics community. Thanks to all those who gave us their support during our tenure at the head of the COEL, and to those who trusted this new source with their articles and advertisements. We invite you to enjoy our first edition, in commemoration of our X Anniversary, where we find ourselves thanks to the hard work and commitment of those who preceded us. Regards!

Alberto Lopez Tom President 2021-2022