Repairs to cracks detected in one of the walls of the new locks installed as part of the expansion of the Panama Canal were completed successfully this week, the waterway’s administrators said.

With the work done, operators began to fill the Cocoli and Agua Clara locks, located respectively at the Pacific and Atlantic entrances to the channel, the Panama Canal Authority, or ACP, said in a statement.

The inauguration of the canal expansion, now 96 percent complete, was scheduled for early April, but the discovery of the cracks in the Pacific-side locks forced the ACP to postpone.

“No specific date has been set yet, but we estimate it won’t be beyond the second quarter of this year,” ACP Administrator Jorge Luis Quijano said.

GUPC, the consortium responsible for building the new set of locks, handled the repairs to the lock walls.

The expansion of the Panama Canal, a waterway used by 6 percent of global trade, began in 2007 with an initial budget of $5.25 billion and was originally scheduled for completion in 2014.