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Megaport project runs into new opposition
by Eric Jackson, from other media

Add the hotel lobby to those who question the construction of a maritime "megaport" on a causeway to be built near the former Howard Air Force Base and Fort Kobbe. The Panama Hotels Association has passed a resolution saying that they are not opposed to port development as such, but they believe that the place where this project is supposed to be built would preclude more valuable tourism development on the west side of the Pacific entrance to the canal.

The port, estimated to involve an investment of $600 to $800 million, would complement the development of Howard into a freight-handling air hub, but would not be practically connectable to the other major canal-area seaports by rail. Connections to that intermodal system would have to be made by trucking containers across the Bridge of the Americas, which would involve traffic problems and damage to the road surface if it were practiced on any large scale.

Leftist groups and labor unions have criticized the Torrijos administration's decision to make the project a private development, especially because it appears that there is a plan to link it to a canal expansion project, using material dug and dredged from the new channels and locks for the causeway and port landfill. This, it is argued, would amount to an improper gift of public property to some private corporation or consortium of companies.

The port companies that are already established here are also generally unhappy with the prospect of new competition. Especially annoyed is Panama Ports, a local subsidiary of Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa, which for anti-monopoly reasons has been excluded by the Panama Maritime Authority (AMP) from the bidding process.

That bidding process is ongoing, with 28 companies having taken out applications to bid. There will be a process of deciding which companies are considered qualified, followed by a submission and opening of bids. If the government is not satisfied with the bids it receives, it can begin a new process. Usually in such cases the specifications for the project are changed.

(In the process by which Hutchison Whampoa obtained the concessions for the former Canal Zone ports of Balboa and Cristobal, there were eight rounds of bidding and in the end there were allegations --- never proven --- of corruption. Panama's public contracting system, with frequent multiple rounds of bidding and specifications or qualifications sometimes written to exclude all but one bidder, is structured in such a way to invite suspicion of corruption whether or not it in fact exists with respect to a particular bidding process.)

The mega-port proposal, with enhanced road connections to Atlantic side ports, is advanced by some as a more practical alternative to expanding the Panama Canal by building a third set of locks that allows the transit of ships too large to pass through the current locks. This argument is rejected by the Torrijos administration and the Panama Canal Authority.