In its third quarter report ACP said that the delay resulted from the fact that the consortium Grupo Unidos por el Canal that is building the third set of locks, will deliver the Atlantic locks on 31 March 2015 and the Pacific locks on 30 June 2015, previously scheduled for early 2015 and April 2015 respectively.
“The main change between the schedule of the completion which had the date of April 2015 postponed to 30 June 2015 for the Pacific lock is due to electromechanical works whose logistics and duration were reassessed and modified resulting in a further delay of two months. The date of completion of the Atlantic lock is now set for the 31 March 2015,” ACP Administrator Jorge Quijano told Seatrade Global.
Those new dates do not include the testing trials of the locks which should take three months and put back the opening of commercial transits, originally forecast for mid-June 2015, to the last quarter of 2015.
To date, 66% of the expansion programme has been completed.
The ACP was granted a $2.3bn loan from a group of mulitlateral agencies including the European Investment Bank (EIB) for $500m, the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC), $800m, the Interamerican Development Bank (IDB), $400m, the International Finance Corporation (IFC ), $300m and the Development Bank of Latin America (CAF), $300m. The rest of the $5.25bn cost of the total expansion programme is financed internally. According to the report and to date, the ACP has received $800m from JBIC, $200m from the EIB, $400m from the IDB and $50m from CAF.
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