The recently expanded maritime route is one of the most impressive engineering projects completed in the last few centuries. No internationally recognised economist could doubt the importance and impact it’s set to have in the future.
The idea behind this large-scale project was to widen the canal’s capacity, double the size of the new lanes and docks, and reduce shipping costs to a level of efficiency that was unimaginable when it opened in 1914.
The Panama Canal expansion plan has cost 5,500 million dollars and was financed by the revenue from the toll programme, five development banks, and an international finance corporation.
Within an international framework, the improvements to the canal now position Panama’s regional economy as one of the countries with the highest expected growth rate in the next five years with many business and port ventures set up to attract industries and investors from all around the world.
The Chinese Cosco Shipping Panama chartered freighter was the first vessel to officially open the canal in June 2016 paying a toll cost of $575,545 and gaining itself a place in the shipping and global trade history books, and later the same day 9 other ships passed through the sluice gates. Construction work took almost 10 years to be completed with more than 40,000 workers involved in the project.
The sheer size of the project and the amount of money spent didn’t leave anyone indifferent with the size of the new gates on a parallel with the Empire State Building. The amount of steel used in the project could have built the Eiffel tower twenty times over and the amount of basalt used was enough to construct two of the great pyramids of Giza.
The ships that previously crossed the Atlantic to the Pacific carrying 5000 containers through its canals are have become a thing of the past and can now handle up to 14,000 containers at a time.
However, the great news is that the environment will benefit greatly from this expansion plan. Leading shipping companies predict that by 2020 the carbon footprint produced by each container transported will be reduced by up to 60%.
