Bill 726.

Summary.

The bill amends Article 1 of Law 35 of 1995, previously amended by Law 115 of 2019. It keeps the Studying Without Hunger Program within the Complementary Feeding Program and provides for a daily snack for students from vulnerable communities in preschool, primary, lower secondary and upper secondary education. It also makes sustained growth of the milk production sector an objective, using domestically produced fresh milk as the primary ingredient in fortified fluid milk that is pasteurized, ultra pasteurized or flavored and 100% domestic.

The Ministry of Education (Ministerio de Educación), acting through the National Directorate of Nutrition and School Health (Dirección Nacional de Nutrición y Salud Escolar), would be institutionally responsible for supplying these programs in official schools at those levels during the school year. Coverage would extend to at least 60% of the students in at least 60% of the official schools operating throughout the Republic of Panama (República de Panamá). Product volumes would be proportional to the number of recipient schools and students. To meet the academic calendar, the ministry would launch or conduct procurement at least six months before the scheduled start of the following school year. Once all procurement stages were completed, it would order deliveries to begin no later than 15 calendar days after the start date set by the applicable executive decree.

For these procurements, the State would include criteria allocating supply proportionally according to each bidder’s documented share of fresh milk purchases from domestic producers, as certified by the Ministry of Agricultural Development (Ministerio de Desarrollo Agropecuario). Those criteria would be considered first and would determine the evaluation of bids. If an eligible bidder declined all or part of its allocation, the Ministry of Education would redistribute that volume proportionally among other interested bidders with demonstrated technical, operational and financial capacity, according to their certified purchases. No bidder would have to accept more than it offered, and a rejected volume could not be transferred directly to another bidder. Allocations would be made every two years, either for the program as a whole or by procurement item.

The Ministry of Education would also set a single mandatory price for bids. It would calculate that price using the average market price of finished milk, documented through statistics held by the Consumer Protection and Competition Defense Authority (Autoridad de Protección al Consumidor y Defensa de la Competencia, ACODECO) for the 12 months preceding the procurement notice, together with current processing and distribution costs for the requested product. Bidders would document verifiable contracts or direct purchases of fresh milk from domestic producers. At an interested party’s request, the Ministry of Agricultural Development would certify the milk’s origin, volume or traceability through the relevant agrifood chains. The two ministries would coordinate the technical parameters included in the evaluation criteria or procurement documents.

The bill also amends the objectives of Studying Without Hunger under Law 115 of 2019. They would include healthy meals based on quality domestic food products, students’ biopsychosocial development and healthy eating habits, and growth of the domestic milk production sector and its agrifood chain. If domestic production varied, the Ministry of Education could adjust the program to maintain its minimum school and student coverage as far as possible, subject to prior certification by the Ministry of Agricultural Development attached to the procurement documents. The Executive Branch would issue implementing regulations within 90 days of promulgation, and the law would take effect the following day. The proposal concerns these public bodies, milk producers and processors, school food suppliers and school communities.