MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Lesson One: how do you say Panama Canal in Chinese?

Panama is moving to make the teaching of Mandarin compulsory in all schools, in recognition of China's growing importance in the world economy. The Panamanian National Assembly has given conditional approval to the bill in the first of three debates.

The bill's supporters say boosting the number of Chinese speakers will help increase Panama's competitiveness. China is the biggest single user of the Panama Canal that connects the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. The bill's supporters recognise that English is the international language of business but say that with China's increasing economic influence, Mandarin is set to be an indispensable language. Panama has important commercial links with China, with bilateral trade running at a billion US dollars annually. But Panama also has diplomatic links with Taiwan, one of the few countries to do so. The proposed legislation sets out a timeframe of 10 years for Mandarin to be taught in all schools. The legislation proposes allowing the immigration of specialist Chinese teachers to help train local teachers. Panama is currently undergoing a surge in trade and boom in port development, infrastructure and construction with the economy growing at over 9%, the quickest in the hemisphere and among the fastest in the world. Panama's important geographic location has helped it surge as trade between Asian manufacturing centres and the markets of North America and Europe keeps expanding. Since Panama took full control of its canal from the US at the end of 1999, overall traffic has expanded by more than one-third and, spurred in particular by the growth of Chinese manufacturing exports, the number of containers used to package electronics, textiles and other factory products transported across Panama has nearly tripled. Sovereignty has allowed the country to push ahead with ambitious plans to double the waterway's capacity. A new channel is to be cut, parts of the existing canal deepened and widened and giant concrete and steel locks are to be put in place. These will be big enough to accommodate so-called post-Panamax ships – enormous vessels that are too big to fit the existing lock basins. Full national control of the canal and the "Zone" – the strip of land alongside the canal that was once a US colony – is also giving Panama more opportunity to develop business related to shipping, ranging from shipyards to suppliers of provisions and bunker fuels. Some of the most notable developments are taking place in the port sector. Operators say that Panama is becoming a regional hub, where container consignments can be broken down and reassembled and sent as part of smaller loads to smaller ports along the coasts of north and South America. All four privately owned ports are planning to expand their capacity to handle more containers and three new Pacific coast ports are planned as part of multi-billion dollar investments designed to double container capacity by 2010.