prasad1
Active member
If you’re wondering where the cash comes from to fund the seemingly boundless public works projects in the works here in Panama, look no further than the sliver of water that bisects the isthmus just west of Panama City ... the Panama Canal.
The sliver is a little bigger now and was the scene of quite a to-do the weekend of June 26 to celebrate that fact. A crowd estimated at 25,000 gathered near the Agua Clara locks on the Atlantic side of the Canal waving Panamanian flags and cheering in the tropical sun as the first supersized vessel made the transit from one ocean to the other.
The US$5.4 billion expansion, initiated in 2007, allows much larger ships to make the 50-mile trip from ocean to ocean. Previously the maximum size of the ship that could make the passage, known in shipping circles as Panamax, was limited by the size of the Canal’s locks and the depth of the water. Building the new locks allows for so-called neo-Panamax ships with a capacity nearly three times (14,000 containers instead of just 5,000) that of Panamax ships to travel the Canal.
Each container ship passing through the Canal pays a toll based on the ship’s capacity, expressed in what are called 20-foot equivalents, or TEUs. A TEU is basically the size of standard shipping container. That toll is now about US$90 per TEU.
The first vessel to transit the new locks was the Chinese COSCO Shipping Panama, which set sail from Piraeus on June 11 carrying 9,472 TEUs and measuring just under 300 meters (about 1,000 feet) in length. Assuming its owners didn’t get a discount for being on display for the crowds, it paid a toll in the range of US$850,000.
Canal officials said they have 170 reservations from neo-Panamax ships to make the trip during the next three months. By 2021, the Panama Canal Authority (known by its Spanish acronym ACP) is hoping the project will bring in US$2.1 billion per year in revenue on top of what it was making before the expansion, a figure that would represent 2.8 percent of Panama’s gross domestic product. The ACP is already eyeing the prospect of adding a fourth set of locks to lure even bigger ships that can now only travel through the Suez Canal.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathleen-peddicord/panama-canal-expansion_b_10773740.html
