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Panama Canal expansion won 76.6 percent support in vote
AFP
PANAMA CITY
Petroleumworld.com 10 26 06
A plan to expand the Panama Canal and build a third set of locks won the support of 76.6 percent of the 924,029 voters who cast ballots in a referendum, Panama's electoral court announced Wednesday.
The court announced the final figures on Sunday's vote, which also included low turnout: 56.7 percent of voters stayed away from the polls.
A total of 21.77 percent voted against the mega-project backed by President Martin Torrijos.
Voters threw their support behind the 5.25-billion-dollar plan to widen the country's transcontinental canal to allow the world's biggest ships to sail between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
Torrijos and the Canal Authority, the government agency that has run the waterway since it was handed over to Panama by the United States in 1999, insisted that not widening the 92-year-old waterway would leave it obsolete after 2012.
About 80 percent of the gross domestic product of Panama, which has a population of three million, is linked directly or indirectly to canal activity, with the waterway's main users being the United States, China and Japan.
Proponents say the canal, through which roughly four percent of world trade passes, badly needs an overhaul to accommodate new, larger ships and remain competitive against other maritime routes.
It takes eight to 10 hours to cross the Isthmus of Panama via the 80-kilometer (50-mile) canal. But the average actual time, including the wait, is 26 hours.
The proposed third lane, parallel to the existing two, would accommodate massive vessels 366 meters (1,200 feet) in length and 49 meters (160 feet) wide with a 15-meter (50-foot) draft.
Today, the so-called post-Panamax ships -- too wide and too long for the Panama Canal -- must circle Cape Horn at the southern tip of South America to pass between the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans.
Construction is scheduled to begin in late 2007 and expected to be completed in 2014.
AFP 25 1542 GMT 10 06
Copyright ©2006 AFP. All Rights Reserved.
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