Panama again leads Latin America, this time in cargo movement.  It will maintain this lead into the future as well with the completion of the canal in 2015.

In Latin America the ports of Colon and Balboa occupy the first and second place in the ranking of volume of cargo moved.

In the Latin American ranking next in the list following the Panamanian ports are the ports of Santos in Brazil, Cartagena in Colombia, and Manzanillo, Mexico.

The ports of Colon and Balboa continued to grow in 2012 at a rate of 13.4% and 7.9% respectively.

Prensa.com reported that “The growth in ports that we have has been attributed to investments made in recent years in excess of five billion dollars and which at the same time have boosted the economy.”

Panama is also currently the leader in terms of the number of machines installed in ports, with 60 gantry cranes: 22 in the port of Balboa, 14 in the Manzanillo International Terminal, 11 in Cristobel, 10 in the Colon Container Terminal (Evergreen) and 3 in the Rodman area operated by the Singapore Authority. This number of port cranes in Panama is larger than that of the entire region.

Source: Prensa.com