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Panama Canal Widening Project Starts

Wider canal should mean lower consumer prices

By Dan Schlossberg
ConsumerAffairs.com

September 4, 2007

The 93-year-old engineering marvel has begun a $5 billion expansion that will double its capacity and allow wider vessels to squeeze through its locks.

Although the project to expected to take eight years, consumer prices – especially on the U.S. East Coast – are expected to plunge as a result.

Two-thirds of all cargo that makes the Panama Canal passage is en route to or from the United States and that figure may increase once the waterway widens.

The new canal is expected to accommodate ships capable of carrying triple the maximum capacity of current users. Ships wider than 110 feet wide at water level cannot use the canal as currently structured but the new canal will stretch that limit to 180 feet at the base and 160 feet at the top.

Two wider sets of locks will be added to both sides of the canal, which currently carries about 4 per cent of the world’s cargo. China ranks second to the U.S. as its biggest customer.

Nearly half the cost of the canal’s expansion will be generated from loans made to the Panama Canal Authority. It will pay back the $2.3 billion it borrowed by hiking annual ship tolls about 3.5 per cent annually.

Both the canal and the Panamanian government will reap big benefits from the expansion.

That will help the Central American country, which suffers from a high poverty rate and has a $10 billion deficit. Panama assumed control of the American-built waterway in 1977.

After consuming 10 years and 25,000 lives, the Panama Canal opened on Aug. 15, 1914.

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