Panama Canal administrator Jorge Quijano says that completion work on the New Panama Canal now stands at 96% and he expects that it will open for business during the second quarter of 2016.
“We are very close—only four percent remains to complete the project,” Quijano said at a project update briefing on Monday. “An expansion of the Panama Canal has never been done and we should all feel very good about where we are today.”
Details given at the briefing indicate that reinforcements to locks are scheduled to be completed mid-January 2016, and trials using a chartered vessel will commence in April.
The decade-long project to widen the Panama Canal by building new, larger locks has been plagued by numerous problems including fissures that were found in the lock gates.
The opening of the new canal is eagerly awaited by the cruise industry, whose new generation of ultra-large cruiseships are unable to transit the existing locks.
