(MENAFN- Newsroom Panama) The Panama Canal begins bilateral meetings this Monday with global companies interested in developing two new ports, one on each side of the waterway that connects the Atlantic and the Pacific, with an estimated investment of $2.6 billion and expected to be operational by early 2029. “There are 17 entities that are talking with the Panama Canal in this first stage. This is a successive process where people have to see the information, do their own analysis and make a corporate decision,” said the administrator of the Interoceanic Canal, Ricaurte Vásquez, when announcing the start of the meetings this Monday.

Market appetite was measured on October 27 when the Panama Canal Authority (ACP) invited“a group of representatives from entities with proven experience in port container operations and container shipping lines.” The Canal reported at the time that the companies APM Terminals, Cosco Shipping Ports, CMA Terminals–CMA, DP World, Hanseatic Global Terminals, MOL, PSA International, SSA Marine–Grupo Carrix and Terminal Investment Limited, CMA CGM, ONE, Evergreen, Hapag Lloyd, HMM, Maersk Line, MSC, OOCL, COSCO, Yang Ming, Port of Houston and ZIM were invited to that first meeting.

The idea, Vásquez assured, is to allow“the broadest competition” in this process, which involves several stages before reaching the“prequalification document” for the concession, which“must be ready either at the end of December or in the first weeks of January.” “We need to determine that there is indeed a project and that there are people to do it with,” the administrator said last week, referring to the meetings that begin this Monday. The development of the new ports of Corozal (Pacific) and Telfers (Atlantic) is part of the plans being analyzed by the Canal and which include the construction of a gas pipeline. The two ports will increase transshipment capacity – currently 9.5 million TEU (20-foot) containers – by 5 million TEU per year.

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