MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Spanish company wins contract for Panama Canal third set of locks

The canal expansion is scheduled for completion by 2014, one hundred years after the US-built canal first opened.

Work began Wednesday on a new set of locks to allow giant cargo vessels to pass through the inter-oceanic Panama Canal, according to the group leading the project.

The consortium, led by Spain's Sacyr, last month won a 3 billion US dollars bid to build the third set of locks, which would be “one of the largest and most important civil engineering works ever realized”.

The locks contract, won by the group including Italian, Belgian and Panamanian companies, is by far the biggest part of a total 12 billion US dollars project to expand the choked-waterway's capacity.

They would accommodate massive vessels known as post-Panamax ships - which must now circle Cape Horn at the southern tip of South America to pass between the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans.

The expansion is scheduled for completion by 2014, one hundred years after the US-built canal first opened.

The 80 kilometer waterway handles five per cent of world trade and much of the commerce between China and the east coast of the United States.

It is scheduled for completion by 2014 - 100 years after the canal first opened. The 80km canal was built by the United States. It handles 5% of world trade.