Canals have been in the headlines this week. One waterway project being officially buried however is a Chinese dreamt-up creation in Central America.
Nicaragua has officially cancelled a 50-year concession it granted to Chinese billionaire Wang Jing more than a decade ago, bringing to a close long-held plans to give the Panama Canal a run for its money.
A groundbreaking ceremony for the proposed $50bn, 278 km long waterway took place 10 years ago, but the project never proceeded with Wang, a telecoms tycoon from Beijing, badly hit by a stock market crash the following year.
Another challenger project to the Panama Canal has gone quiet. Florida-based Zergratran debuted plans in 2022 for an underground tunnel that would use magnetic levitation technology to transfer containers in less than 30 minutes between fully automated ports on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of northern Colombia. This project has since gone dormant.
Media reported yesterday on another big canal project away from the Americas.
Cambodia is pressing ahead with a canal that will cut its reliance on Vietnamese ports. The 180 km Funan Techo Canal has Chinese backing and will connect Phnom Penh Autonomous Port with Kep and the Gulf of Thailand.