A consortium led by Spain’s Sacyr won a multibillion dollar bid on Wednesday to build a new set of locks that will allow giant cargo vessels to cross the Panama Canal, the Canal Authority said.
Adiano Espino, the Panama Canal Authority official who made the announcement at a public event, said that the winning bid received the best technical evaluation and was also the most affordable.
The “United for the Canal” group, which brings together Spanish, German, Italian and Panamanian companies, presented the lowest bidding price, at US$3.12 billion. The cost was earlier estimated at US$3.35 billion.
The canal was built between 1904 and 1914 by the US, which handed control over to Panama in December 1999.
The largest ships that use the canal carry up to 5,000 containers, but after the expansion supertankers and ships carrying as many as 12,000 containers would be able to sail through it.
“The process has been crystal-clear,” said Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli, who was present at the ceremony.
“The country has benefited and the price is even lower than the base price that the Canal Authorities had,” he said.
Reacting to the decision, Sacyr chief executive Luis del Rivero described it as a positive development for Spanish businesses.
“It’s good news for Spanish businesses and engineering,” he said during a roundtable discussion in Madrid, adding that the project was “one of the world’s most important engineering works.”
According to the bidding rules there is still a period for the losers to appeal the result.
The “United for the Canal” group includes Sacyr Vallehermoso SA, Impregilo SpA of Italy, Jan de Nul NV of Belgium, and Panama’s Constructora Urbana.
The group beat out bids by a consortium that included the US-based Bechtel and the Taisei and Mitsubishi corporations of Japan — which according to Espino asked for US$4.19 billion — and a bid by the CANAL consortium, headed by Spanish companies ACS Servicios and Acciona Infraestructuras, which asked for US$5.98 billion.
Some 14,000 ships, comprising about five percent of annual world commerce, pass through the Central American shortcut between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
The waterway’s main users are the US, China and Japan.
The government says work would be financed by a hike in tolls, which pull in some US$5 million a day.
The canal expansion project, begun in September 2007 and budgeted at US$5.25 billion, is expected to be completed by August 2014, 100 years after completion of the initial construction.
A Chinese freighter that allegedly snapped an undersea cable linking Taiwan proper to Penghu County is suspected of being owned by a Chinese state-run company and had docked at the ports of Kaohsiung and Keelung for three months using different names. On Tuesday last week, the Togo-flagged freighter Hong Tai 58 (宏泰58號) and its Chinese crew were detained after the Taipei-Penghu No. 3 submarine cable was severed. When the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) first attempted to detain the ship on grounds of possible sabotage, its crew said the ship’s name was Hong Tai 168, although the Automatic Identification System (AIS)
An Akizuki-class destroyer last month made the first-ever solo transit of a Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force ship through the Taiwan Strait, Japanese government officials with knowledge of the matter said yesterday. The JS Akizuki carried out a north-to-south transit through the Taiwan Strait on Feb. 5 as it sailed to the South China Sea to participate in a joint exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces that day. The Japanese destroyer JS Sazanami in September last year made the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force’s first-ever transit through the Taiwan Strait, but it was joined by vessels from New Zealand and Australia,
CHANGE OF MIND: The Chinese crew at first showed a willingness to cooperate, but later regretted that when the ship arrived at the port and refused to enter Togolese Republic-registered Chinese freighter Hong Tai (宏泰號) and its crew have been detained on suspicion of deliberately damaging a submarine cable connecting Taiwan proper and Penghu County, the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement yesterday. The case would be subject to a “national security-level investigation” by the Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office, it added. The administration said that it had been monitoring the ship since 7:10pm on Saturday when it appeared to be loitering in waters about 6 nautical miles (11km) northwest of Tainan’s Chiang Chun Fishing Port, adding that the ship’s location was about 0.5 nautical miles north of the No.
SECURITY: The purpose for giving Hong Kong and Macau residents more lenient paths to permanent residency no longer applies due to China’s policies, a source said The government is considering removing an optional path to citizenship for residents from Hong Kong and Macau, and lengthening the terms for permanent residence eligibility, a source said yesterday. In a bid to prevent the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from infiltrating Taiwan through immigration from Hong Kong and Macau, the government could amend immigration laws for residents of the territories who currently receive preferential treatment, an official familiar with the matter speaking on condition of anonymity said. The move was part of “national security-related legislative reform,” they added. Under the amendments, arrivals from the Chinese territories would have to reside in Taiwan for
RSS