The going attempts to expand the Panama Canal don’t seem to be going so well. Reuters reports:
Group United for the Canal, a consortium led by Spanish builder Sacyr, said in a statement that the government’s canal authority had broken off talks on who will pay some $1.6 billion needed to complete the ambitious project.
Most work on the canal has halted while the two sides attempt to resolve the disputes.
The project on the 100-year-old canal, meant to accommodate the increasing number of ships—particularly natural gas tankers—that exceed so-called Panamax size, was about 70 percent complete.
The only good news for Panama and the consortium is that a much-heralded project, backed by a Chinese firm, to build a new, much longer, canal through Nicaragua also appears to be way behind schedule.
Post-Panamax ships now make up about 16 percent of the world’s container fleet today but carry 45 percent of the cargo.
