Panama City, Panama – Panamanian voters on Sunday overwhelmingly approved a $5.2 billion proposal to expand the country’s national treasure, the Panama Canal.
With 96 percent of votes counted, ballots in favor of the project led those opposed 78 percent to 22 percent, prompting Panama’s electoral tribunal to declare the “yes” vote victorious. That gave the green light to the first major modification to the 50-mile waterway since it opened in 1914.
President Martin Torrijos staked his considerable popularity on voters’ approving the proposal, which he described in a recent interview as the “chance of a lifetime” for Panama.
In response to the tribune’s declaration Sunday evening broadcast on Panamanian TV, Torrijos called the vote a victory for Panamanian democracy and the nation’s future.
Little construction is planned over the next several months, as the Panama Canal Authority, the quasi-independent administrative body, prepares an environmental-impact report and final blueprints. But the project is expected to take eight years and create 7,000 jobs, with employment for thousands more tied indirectly to the proposal.
By late next year, excavation will begin on the largest component: a 4-mile bypass of the southernmost locks of the canal to permit the passage of ships capable of carrying 8,000 containers, or twice the cargo that fits through the existing waterway. On the Caribbean side, the new shipping lane will occupy a partially completed trench excavated from 1939 to 1942.
Later, two sets of parallel locks half again wider and longer than the existing sets will be built.
Torrijos’ government has promised voters that the expanded canal and the added ship traffic would make Panama the “Singapore of South America.”
Dozens of high-rise office and residential towers are planned for the capital, including three structures more than 80 stories tall. The canal’s sixth container port, west of the Pacific entrance, is also expected to go forward, at an estimated cost of $600 million.
The government is expected to ask Panama’s congress to approve hundreds of millions of dollars to build a new sewage system to clean up highly polluted Panama Bay, which fronts the capital. The money also would fund a four-lane highway to connect Panama City, on the Pacific, with the city of Colon on the Caribbean side.
