Panama to expand canal

Panama held a plebiscite on Sunday which approved the expansion of the 50-mile canal. The key is to upgrade the facilities to accomodate the larger vessels increasingly in common use. As built today, the canal can only handle vessels up to about 4,000 TEUs. The widened canal will be navigatable for vessels up to 8,000 TEUs, the current standard for new container ships. The issue for Panama will be that by the time the canal improvements are finished (scheduled for eight years from now), the 10,000 TEU ship will be becoming the norm. Full story