Investing In Panama: Transportation Infrastructure

Ports

Nearly 14,000 ships transit the Panama Canal each year with more than 192 million tons of cargo and 700,000 passengers and crew onboard. Because of this traffic and modern port facilities, Panama is expected to become the region’s principal multi-modal logistics center in coming years.

Today, Panama has the largest maritime fleet in the world and its four new container ports represent a total investment of over US$4.5 billion. The ports, combined with the trans-isthmian railroad, are projected to move one million cargo containers in 1999 and three million by 2006.

Currently, the main ports are:

On the Atlantic Coast:

• 1. Manzanillo International Terminal (Stevedoring Services of America)
• 2. Colon Container Terminal (Evergreen International Corporation)
• 3. Colon Port Terminal (Hutchinson Port Holdings)
• 4. Colon 2000 (Cruise Ship Terminal)

On the Pacific side:

• 1. Panama Port Terminal S.A (Hutchinson Port Holdings)
• 2. Rodman (Alireza - Mobil) for fuel loading and unloading.

Railroad

The railroad operated by Kansas City Railroad and Mi-Jack runs parallel to the Panama Canal in a 47 mile distance, and with 143 years of existence, being the first transcontinental railroad. This important transportation means, recently restored and modernized, will provide an efficient inter modal connection for world trade complemented by the present infrastructure, transforming Panama into a multimodal transportation center. Among the railroad services are:

• 1. Cargo transport
• 2. Passengers transports

Highways

Panama has a highway network of approximately 11,300 Km., in asphalted concrete roads. Among the roads that add importance to Panama and facilitate communication and transportation are:

• 1. The Panamerican Highway
• 2. The Northern and Southern Corridor
• 3. The Madden Colon Freeway

The construction of the highway that connects the cities of Panama and Colon will contribute to complement the intermodal logistic cluster, the services provided by the Panama Canal and the Inter Oceanic Railroad are added to this infrastructure, considering the transport of cargo they may effect, plus the services provided by the Tocumen International Airport, the airport located in the former Howard Base and the Enrique A. Jiménez Airport in Colon, Panama has the necessary and available infrastructure for the development of a multimodal logistics center of world scope.

Airports

Panama has 27 public and 41 private airports. From these public airports, 5 are full fledged airports, meaning that they have immigration and customs services.

Our main international airport is Tocumen, located a 15 minutes from Panama City, and may be easily accessed by a modem highway (Southern Corridor). The second most important airport is Marcos A. Gelabert, located as well in the capital city, providing services to national and international flights.

It is worth mentioning that the transformation of Enrique A. Jiménez Airport, located near Colons Free Zone, into an airport for cargo and passengers is one of the projected goals set by the Logistics & Multimodal Center Project, that is being currently developed in this important Atlantic area.