Panama is a Latin American pioneer in providing digital worker benefit

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Panama is a Latin American pioneer in providing digital worker benefit

Tue, 10/30/2018 - 17:05

By Luis Miguel Blanco

A French-origin company that reaches 420 million people chose Panama to launch a digital benefit for the first time in Latin America to reward good performance without assuming tax burdens.

This is Sodexo, which has three years of a complete operation of three of its main welfare products in Panama, after acquiring 100 percent of Vale, which in turn had twelve years to offer printed vouchers for workers' compensation.

Spanish Daniel Álvarez has 3 years in the country as marketing manager of the group, who in an interview with Efe said that the Central American country offers "many opportunities" and has "a great advantage" in its legislation that allows this product to be promoted.

"They are very attentive in Colombia and Uruguay", about what the firm is doing in Panama, which in turn is "the beachhead" for the company in its expansion plans in Central America, starting in Costa Rica - where they offer a service- and Guatemala "due to its very attractive market conditions".

They are in Mexico and Colombia, among eight other Latin American countries, "but we did not have anything between them and Panama became strategic," he said.

Born half a century ago in France, the company has expanded to 80 countries around the world, with Panama as the eighth nation in Latin America where they are installed and where they control 90 percent of this market.

"Panama is a strategic country for the market and the possibilities, the number of multinationals installed is very important for us," he said.

He explained that Sodexo is listed on the Paris stock exchange and has 75,000 employees who serve 420 million people in the main lines of wellness business "since the human being is born until the end of its life cycle."

In Panama three years ago they entered with 1,800 client companies and 56,000 beneficiaries. Today they serve 2,300 companies and more than 100,000 workers receive any of their products, and their projection is "to grow to double digits in the next three years" and reach small and medium enterprises with the digital voucher.

"We are the only ones to have an integral offer, the printed voucher, the electronic card and the first digital voucher in Latin America," he said proudly.

Panama has for more than a decade with a law of benefits to workers, which offers tax benefits to companies and "has not been widely disclosed," he said.

Only three companies are certified by the Government to offer the food voucher, which result in the non-payment of taxes of income or employer burden to social security.

Álvarez said that in the case of food vouchers the top is $ 350 per worker per month, while the digital voucher, in alliance with the Colombian "fintech" Nequi, is $ 1,500 per employee, only for "special" occasions, such as a birth, a Christmas gift or for perfect work attendance.

The digital voucher through Nequi, an application of Banistmo de Colombia, complies with the regulations of the Superintendency of Banks and is used in a list of affiliated stores, he said.

Unlike the more than two years it takes to process an incentive product by traditional means -he said-, the "fintech" took "less than five months" to start it up.

The legal specialist in benefits to workers María Teresa Mendoza told Efe that this new product is covered by the tax exemptions in the category "prizes, it is not a salary, in the understanding that it is occasional, not a payment of all months".

Mendoza, legal expert of the influential law firm Morgan & Morgan, said the firm is Sodexo's adviser on compensation and benefit issues for workers, but at the same time "clients", who will experience this year's use of this digital product.

 

https://www.panamatoday.com/panama/panama-latin-american-pioneer-providing-digital-worker-benefit-8249