• Submitted by: manso
• Business and Economy
• 02 / 16 / 2011

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Feb 15, 2011. The Journal of Commerce Online. Asian cargo transiting expanded Panama Canal to use new facilities. BALBOA, Panama — A new container terminal in the Cuban port of Mariel will become an important transshipment hub for Asian cargo transiting the expanded Panama Canal after 2014, according to Rodolfo Sabonge, vice president of planning and marketing for the Panama Canal Authority.

The Brazilian construction company Grupo Odebrecht is building the new terminal west of Havana with the help of a $300 million loan from the Brazilian government.

Sabonge said Cuba changed its law prohibiting foreign private investment to allow construction of the new terminal, which Singapore’s PSA International will operate.

Panama Canal news from JOC: A Deeper Vision. The first phase of the Mariel terminal includes a berth and logistics platform for offshore oil drilling.

The second phase includes a new container terminal that would compete with existing Caribbean container hubs at Kingston, Jamaica; Caucedo, Dominican Republic; and Freeport, Bahamas for transshipment of containers to ports everywhere on the East Coast of North and South America, except the U.S., which still embargoes trade with Cuba.

“It will become an important transshipment hub for cargo to and from the U.S. when the embargo is lifted,” Sabonge said in an interview at the canal authority’s headquarters here.

Panama’s existing transshipment hubs at Colon on the north end of the canal are too far from U.S. Gulf ports to provide transshipment hubs. They are better served by hubs in the Caribbean, he said.


Source: www.joc.com/maritime/cuban-box-terminal-will-become-transshipment-hub