Nicaragua fast-tracks China plan to build canal

Guardian News and Media/Managua

A Nicaraguan congressional committee has approved giving a China-based consortium the concession to build and operate a canal between the Pacific and Caribbean, fast-tracking the huge development project despite objections from the opposition.

The infrastructure committee president, Jenny Martínez, said the bill had immediately been sent to the National Assembly, which is expected to approve it.

President Daniel Ortega’s Sandinista Front controls the national legislature with 63 out of 92 politicians.

Opposition politicians voted against the proposal, saying the initiative was being rushed.

The Chinese company, HK Nicaragua Canal Development Investment, is working with the Nicaraguan government on the canal project, which was announced last week.

Experts say it may take 11 years to finish, cost $40bn and require the digging of about 130 miles of waterway. Canal proponents say the waterway could create 40,000 construction jobs and double the per-capita gross domestic product of Nicaragua, one of the poorest countries in Latin America.

The government plans to grant the Chinese company a concession for an initial 50 years, with the possibility of doubling it.

Critics say there needs to be more information before politicians approve the construction of a canal whose location and environmental impact has not been determined.

Others have questioned the plan’s viability just a few hundred miles north-west of the Panama canal.

“Since there is no defined path, we can’t measure the degree of seriousness of this project,” the opposition member Javier Vallejos said. “This is like putting the cart before the horses,” he added, referring to the fact that legislators are approving the canal’s construction before knowing where it would be built.

Jaime Incer, an adviser to the presidency on environmental issues, agreed with Vallejos and said authorities needed to define a specific route before approving a concession. “There are at least six proposed routes and five of them include Lake Nicaragua, but there is nothing definite, that’s all part of the unknown,” he said.

Ortega has not presented an economic feasibility study or research into the potential environmental impact of the project. Last month he said the project would start in Bluefields Bay on the southern Caribbean coast, go through the centre of the country and into Lake Nicaragua and end at the southern Pacific coast. The deputy foreign minister, Manuel Coronel, chairman of the Grand Canal Authority, said on Monday that awarding the concession to the Chinese company guaranteed the project would be carried out. “It’s a very serious company, very responsible and recognised,” he said.