The Panama Canal

The Panama Canal is an iconic landmark, and the canal tolls represent a significant portion of Panama’s GDP. GDP growth has been bolstered by the Panama Canal expansion project that was completed in 2016 at a cost of $5.3 billion – about 10-15% of current GDP. The expansion project more than doubled the Canal’s capacity, enabling it to accommodate high-capacity vessels such as tankers and neopanamax vessels that are too large to traverse the existing canal. The US and China are the top users of the Canal. The revenue generated by the canal was $2.7 billion in 2020, witnessing a 7.2% growth from the previous year. In the same year, 13,369 ships passed through the channel with a gross tonnage of 255.7 million.