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Even as the economic downturn has stalled major construction activities across the globe, work on dredging the Panama canal continues round-the-clock.
The principal contract for the $5.25-billion expansion of the Canal, a project that will probably alter global shipping patterns and cement this Central American nation’s place as a centre of global logistics, is expected to be given this month.
"This is a financial crisis, and there has been a decline in ship traffic, but we are very much on time and on target," asserted the Panama Canal Authority Chief Executive, Mr Alberto Aleman. He denied rumours that the global recession may cause the project to miss its scheduled completion date of 2014.
The work includes building two sets of locks to accommodate massive containerships.
Dubbed post-Panamax, the super-sized vessels are capable of carrying three times more cargo than ships now transiting the canal.
The construction of the two new locks—one at the waterway’s Caribbean entrance and the other on the Pacific Ocean—will cost $3 billion or more, take five years to complete and require an army of 5,000 construction workers.
The Canal Authority maintains that the expanded canal will make Panama an even more important transit hub by attracting a bigger share of Asian container freight destined for eastern US.
At present, 70 per cent of that cargo is offloaded at Los Angeles, Long Beach, California and other North American ports and moved by rail or truck across the country to its destinations.
A new 6.4-km access channel on the Pacific side is 85 per cent excavated and dredging is under way.
The new segment will be much deeper than the existing canal, allowing passage of quarter-mile long ships carrying 14,000 containers, compared with the maximum 4,500-containerships that now transit the 80-km waterway.
But global shipping companies are wary of the rising tolls the authorities are charging to finance the canal’s expansion, Exim News Service reported.
(Source: Transport Weekly)
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