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    Cobre Panama restart: macroeconomic and project implications for mine planners

    February 26, 2026|

    Reviewed by Tom Sullivan

    Cobre Panama restart: macroeconomic and project implications for mine planners

    First reported on MINING.com

    30 Second Briefing

    Panama’s business lobby Sindicato de Industriales de Panama warns that reopening First Quantum’s Cobre Panama open-pit mine, which once supported over 40,000 direct and indirect jobs and supplied nearly 2% of global copper, is central to lifting GDP growth from 4% in 2025 to a projected 6% by 2027. If the mine remains shut, SIP sees 2027 growth slipping to 3.7%, with weaker diversification as copper exports are replaced by primary goods like shrimp, fish and bananas. President José Raúl Mulino plans a June decision on a restart, while First Quantum says it could produce about 70,000 tonnes of copper in a year by processing existing ore stockpiles.

    Technical Brief

    • Cobre Panama’s open-pit operation previously supported >40,000 direct and indirect jobs across the supply chain.
    • SIP reports manufacturing expanded only 0.46% last year, signalling underutilised industrial capacity without mining.
    • SIP’s downside scenario shows 2027 GDP growth 3.7%, about 40% lower than the mining-restart case.
    • Labour market gains in early 2024 partially reversed once mine-related activity contracted post-shutdown.
    • Export mix has shifted towards primary goods (shrimp, fish, bananas), reducing value-added processing and logistics demand.
    • First Quantum has accepted state ownership of copper resources as a negotiation baseline, with project-specific application unresolved.

    Our Take

    Because Cobre Panama contributes nearly 2% of global copper supply, a prolonged shutdown tightens the same copper and critical minerals markets that recent Canada–Mexico supply-chain planning efforts are trying to stabilise, as flagged in the 18 Feb 2026 action-plan piece.

    The growth gap SIP projects for Panama by 2027 echoes a pattern in our database where copper-linked economies in Latin America show outsized GDP sensitivity to single large assets, making diversification into other exports like shrimp, fish and bananas more than a social issue and increasingly a macro-risk hedge.

    First Quantum’s predicament at Cobre Panama will be closely watched by other major copper operators such as Codelco and Rio Tinto named in this piece, as permitting and social-licence outcomes here could influence how large-scale open pits are structured and negotiated across Latin America in upcoming project cycles.

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    Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.

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