Biggest Chinese Investment in Panama Makes Progress


News from Panama / Monday, April 9th, 2018

The container port China is building in the Atlantic entrance of the Panama Canal is 30 percent done and it is the biggest Asian investment in the Isthmus until now.

 

In only nine months, the project executed 310 million dollars in values, of the 1.1 billion included in its first stage, reported spokespersons of the construction, in charge of state China entity Communications Construction Company,

one of the biggest construction and design enterprises of China and the second largest dredging firms of the world.

The advances were known during a tour of the area, of the manager of the Maritime Authority of Panama, Jorge Barakat, who thanked the confidence the investors have deposited in Panama for the construction of projects that contribute to the country’s competitiveness.

This project belonging to the Puerto de Contenedores Panama-Colon (PCCP for its acronym in English) includes construction, operation and management of the terminal with capacity to move 2.5 million containers a year besides general cargo.

It will also have three docks, two of them with capacity to receive the Neopanamax megaships of up to 365 meters long, 49 wide and 15 in depth (from floating line to the hull); ‘this project will tribute aggregate value to the country by strengthening a logistics platform’, said a source of PCCP.

At the inauguration of construction last June, Ye Cheng, president of the private group China Landbridge Group (CLG), to which belongs PCCP, explained the importance

of this complex in Margarita island, in Colon, which will connect its ports in Asia, Oceania, to exploit maritime cooperation and contributing thus to the development of the included nations.

China and Panama announced the establishment of diplomatic relations last June 12.

Since then, there was an accelerated increase in high level contacts and agreements in several sectors, many of which were signed during a recent visit of Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela, to the Asian country.

Among the expectations of Chinese capital investments in the Isthmus there is the study and execution of a fast passenger and cargo train, which would join the capital with the city of David (440 kilometers) in the extreme west near the border with Costa Rica.

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