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Prepare your credit cards. Panama has officially named Sept. 15-17 as “Black Weekend,” the annual weekend for big sales around the country.

Most of Panama City’s biggest shopping malls will participate, including Albrook Mall, Westland Mall, Multiplaza and Santiago Mall. All the shops will open at 9 a.m. during the weekend, promising “discounts up to 70 percent in products, brands, and technology.”

The promotion was first announced last year as a response to “Black Friday” in the United States. The day after Thanksgiving, “Black Friday” is viewed as the official start of the holiday buying season and the biggest shopping day of the year.

Panama purposely chose September, one of the slower times of the year, to stage the local version of Black Friday. The real accomplishment was forming an alliance “for the first time” with the association of shopping centers “to create a new tourism product that promotes Panama” as “the best shopping destination in Latin America,” Gustavo Him, administrator of the Panama Tourism Authority, told reporters in May.

Similar events have succeeded in other countries in the region, including Ecuador, Argentina, Chile, and Brazil.

This week the Panama Tourism Authority released a promotional video: