Panama City, Feb 2 (EFE). — The annulment of the concession to the Chinese conglomerate CK Hutchison for the operation of two ports around the Panama Canal has not affected the bidding process for the construction of two new terminals being pushed by the administration of the interoceanic route, its administrator, Ricaurte Vásquez, said this Monday.
«This has not interrupted the process we are carrying out to be able to launch a tender for the concession of two terminal ports, one here in Telfers (Caribbean) and the other in Corozal (Pacific),» declared Vásquez.
The concession for the ports of Balboa and Cristóbal, two of the five that exist around the Canal, is managed by the central government through the Panama Maritime Authority (AMP), which has already announced that APM Terminal Panama, a subsidiary of the AP Moller-Maersk group, will temporarily take over the operation of both ports once PPC's exit is finalized.
The Maersk subsidiary will be in charge of the ports until a new «open and transparent» concession tender is completed, said Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino, who guaranteed the operational continuity of both terminals that moved 3.77 million containers in 2025, 38% of the total of the five ports.
The Panama Canal, an autonomous body of the Panamanian state, is venturing into the port issue and last Friday launched the tender process for the two new ports of Telfers and Corozal, which require an investment of 2.600 billion dollars, as well as a gas pipeline of at least 4.000 billion dollars.
The Prequalification Documents published on the Panama Canal website (https://concesiones.delcanal.com) will indicate to interested parties how to provide the necessary documentation to participate in the bidding processes for these initiatives, a communiqué from the administration of the navigable passage said last Friday.
«Once people formalize their interest in participating in the tender process, we will have a series of conversations with the prequalified to determine the final tender document that should come out, say, around mid-year, something like that. And that should take about five or six months for the final tender at the beginning of 2027,» Vásquez explained to journalists.
«The decisions that the central government and the Supreme Court of Justice have made, we have received them as they arose.»
Annulled Concession
The 1997 contract that granted the 25-year concession for the ports of Balboa (Pacific) and Cristóbal (Atlantic) to Panama Ports Company, as well as the addenda and the 2021 automatic extension, were declared unconstitutional by Panama's Supreme Court.
That is, they were in fact annulled by the ruling, which responds to two lawsuits filed in July 2025 by Panama's Comptroller General, Anel Flores, who pointed to the existence of harmful terms.
«It is palpable the contractual imbalance, which is reflected in the privileges and prerogatives granted to the company, as well as in an absent fair and equitable consideration for the State, which affects the general welfare,» says the Supreme Court of Panama's ruling, according to the local press.
The ports of Balboa and Cristóbal are part of the purchase and sale agreement for more than 40 terminals for about 23.000 billion dollars reached in 2025 by CK Hutchison and the consortium led by the US asset manager BlackRock, a transaction halted by China in the context of a geopolitical battle with the United States.
