The £9.3bn mini Suez Canal spanning 50 miles where massive oceans meet | World | News
Around the world, there are thousands of infrastructure projects which when built have helped to improve the flow of world trade. One of the most famous of these is the Panama Canal which links the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean.
The canal, which according to History took nine years to build between 1904 and 1913, was 50 miles long and cost the USA $375m. Altered for inflation that would be $11.8bn or £9.3bn in today’s money accounting for inflation.
According to reports, around 56,000 people worked to build, dig, and construct the canal, and of this group, 5,600 people died.
After it was finished the canal was considered one of the great engineering achievements of the 20th Century and paved the way for naval traffic to make its way from one ocean to the other.
In the decades since the Panama Canal has seen thousands of tonnes worth of shipping pass through. Statistica reported that in 2022 alone over 14,200 ships made their way through the canal, the highest traffic in that period.
In contrast, the lowest number of ships to pass through the canal was in 2016, lower even than in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic.
While shipping has consistently passed through the canal in the years since it was opened, its ownership has changed. 25 years ago, in 1999, control of the Panama Canal was handed over to Panama in accordance with the Torrijos-Carter Treaties.
At the time of the handover, the Los Angeles Times reported that Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso famously said before hoisting the country’s flag: “The canal is ours”.
Then head of the US delegation to the handover Army Secretary Louis Caldera commented: “The United States could not aspire to be a good neighbour to Latin America and continue occupying and dividing the territory of a country considered a friend.”
The Panama Canal, though impressive, is sometimes considered the smaller and shorter cousin to the Suez Canal in Egypt which is much longer at 120 miles long.
However, what the two massive infrastructure projects have in common is that they have saved shipping from taking the long way round and helped expedite the delivery of goods around the globe.
