The Panama Canal Expects up to 32 Ships to Cross Daily as of June 1st

• The rainy season officially started for the Panama Canal on May 7, which has begun to be reflected little by little in the level of lakes Gatún and Alajuela. This is important news for the country. The serious drought, a product of the El Niño phenomenon, forced the interoceanic waterway to apply drastic measures, reducing the daily traffic of ships to only allow, at one time, the passage of 24 ships.
• The Panama Canal welcomed more ships per day in May, signalling a slow return to normalcy and a wider sigh of relief for shippers hoping for an end to transit restrictions that have been in place since last summer.
• According to the Panama Canal Authority (ACP), as many as 32 ships will be allowed to reserve a spot to sail through the waterway by June based on the present and projected level of the manmade Gatún Lake, which was heavily impacted by a months-long drought during Panama’s May-to-November rainy season last year.
• Clarksons Research said in an analysis earlier this month that total transits in the canal are still down by 30% compared to a year prior. Under normal circumstances, 36 to 38 vessels are allowed to be booked to transit the Panama Canal per day.
• With the country’s dry season coming to an end this month, the ACP has already been easing restrictions that were originally put in place throughout the second half of 2023, most recently increasing the number of daily reservations allowed from 24 to 27. With the completion of the maintenance, this number increased again to 31 per day across both the original Panamax locks (24 vessels) and the newer Neopanamax locks (seven vessels). Additionally, an extra slot will open in the Neopanamax locks starting June 1, with crossings expected to remain at 32 per day until further notice.
• Finally, to prevent a repeat of last year’s events, in March, Panama’s Council of Ministers unveiled the creation of a Multimodal Dry Canal project to speed up the movement of goods and improve clearance times. As part of the project, the country would integrate existing roads, railways, port facilities, airports, logistics warehouses and duty-free zones to create a new special customs jurisdiction to provide a dry route as an alternative to the roughly 50-mile waterway.
• Maersk (shipping and logistics company) debuted a similar “land bridge” service to kick off 2024, bypassing the canal on one of its trade routes amid the shipping delays posed by the transit restrictions. As part of the service, the company would split its Oceania-to-the-Americas route into two loops on each side of the canal, where cargo would be dropped off at a port before being transported to the other side via rail and picked up by a ship.

(Source: Newsroom Panama)