Panama Canal may miss deadline

Speaking with Reuters at the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia last week, Aleman admitted, “In the next few months we will be able to say with more certainty when the work will be completed”, adding that he was not sure if the project would be finished on time. He hinted that future possible delays in laying concrete may create the hold-up but that this may be only mean a matter of months.

In February last year (2011) CM was the first publication to question whether or not the project would meet its initial proposed completion date, understood to be set for August 2014 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the Canal’s opening. At that time, the ACP told this publication it had never said the opening would be on August 15, 2014.

The ACP spokesperson explained, “When the lock project was awarded by us on July 15, 2009 we gave the contractor 1,883 days to complete which takes us to October 20, 2014. Since that time we have only ever said that we would complete the Canal expansion in 2014 to coincide with the Canal’s original opening. We have never said August 15, we have only talked about the year 2014 and we are mystified as to how people have come to believe otherwise.”