Nicaragua to build new canal in 12 years
NICARAGUA has announced its intention to build a canal that would provide another Pacific-Atlantic link at a cost of US$18 billion, Reuters reports.
"It is necessary," President Enrique Bolanos told a Western Hemisphere defence ministers' meeting in Managua recently. The canal would be able to handle 250,000-ton ships, and would complement the Panama Canal, he said.
The project, said Mr Bolanos, would take 12 years to build and would first link the Pacific to Lake Nicaragua and then with the Escondido River, which empties into the Caribbean at the port of Bluefields.
Panamanians will vote in a referendum on October 22 on whether to expand their canal. Nicaragua says there would still be demand for a new waterway despite the expected Panama Canal expansion.
The US first planned a Nicaraguan Canal before switching to Panama in the early 20th century after a French canal construction company went bankrupt in the more northern Central American country.
