Canal expansion wins voters
From correspondents in Panama City: An ambitious $US5.25 billion ($6.99 billion) plan to expand Panama’s famous canal is expected to win voter support in a referendum next month despite fears that costs could spiral and threaten the poor nation with bankruptcy. Polls show some two thirds of voters, hoping for a jobs bonanza, support the widening of the canal as opposition to the canal’s first major overhaul since it opened in 1914 has lost steam. The canal, which initially cost $US375 million and 25,000 lives nearly a century ago, carries four per cent of world trade on a shortcut between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, saving ships a long haul around South America and the dangerous Cape Horn. But many modern ships are too bulky to fit into its narrow locks, meaning Panama has to expand them or lose business to competitors like the US intermodal system of ports and cross-country rail links. The Panama Canal Authority (ACP), which runs the waterway, warns the route will become log-jammed in seven years if nothing is done. The current plan would double capacity. “The ability of the canal to compete with other routes and alternative methods of transport depends on its expansion,” President Martin Torrijos said yesterday. “The canal is important not only for Panama but also for world trade.”