Word: canals
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...expansion, set to be completed in the canal's centennial year, 2014, could also mark the nation's coming of age. It's a chance, say officials, to shed once and for all Panama's 20th century image as a U.S. lapdog and bolster its bid to become the hemisphere's Hong Kong--a world-class maritime, financial and commercial center for everything from foreign-exchange banking to aviation services...
...also a chance, the officials agree, for Panama's ruling class to shed its notorious reputation for brazen malfeasance by managing the new canal wealth responsibly and finally doing right by the 40% of Panamanians living in poverty. The country's GDP per capita is $4,318, which still makes it No. 2 in Central America. Serious doubts about income redistribution are a big reason that only 22% of respondents to a recent poll said they thought the expansion would bring real economic benefits to Panama and its population of 3.2 million. Some 64% of Panamanians said they support...
...canal is Panama's oil, its critical resource. But under the Americans it was run like a military installation. Since the canal's handover on Dec. 31, 1999, the Panama Canal Authority (ACP) has run it like a business--more efficiently, more safely and more profitably--doubling toll income to an estimated $1.4 billion this year. (The Suez Canal earns $3.5 billion.) That's nearly 10% of GDP. "Before, the canal was just about moving ships," says ACP administrator Alberto Alemán. "Today it's about moving cargo...
...Alemán's more lucrative changes was creating different cargo classes for toll charges (container, tanker, passenger, etc.), which has had the dual effect of augmenting revenues while presenting users with a fairer fee structure. The new authority also designed a more efficient transit-reservation system: a canal passage that often entailed a wait of several days at the canal's entrance a decade ago takes less than a day now, increasing throughput...
Still, the biggest problem is traffic jams: more than 14,000 ships transit the canal each year, stretching its outdated capacity. And a growing share of that freight can't cross Panama at all. By 2010, the number of post-Panamax vessels in the global commercial fleet is expected to jump 74%, to about 700, and by 2011, they will probably account for half the world's oceangoing commercial-cargo capacity, according to the World Shipping Council in Washington. The expansion design, approved by Panama's Congress last spring, would dig a new approach channel about five miles long just...