Panama won't fret for now about Nicaragua canal

Panama Canal administrators on Monday downplayed the competitive threat posed by Nicaragua's plan for a canal linking the Atlantic and Pacific.

President Daniel Ortega said last week a concession to build an inter-oceanic canal across his Central American nation was awarded to an unnamed Chinese consortium based in Hong Kong.

"The Panama Canal currently has the capacity, there is no doubt about it and (a new canal in Nicaragua) would represent competition that we would have to manage when the moment comes," deputy administrator Manuel Benitez told reporters.

But "for the moment, we're not immediately concerned" given that if the project for a Nicaraguan canal is approved, "it will still take considerable time before it can operate", he added.

The ambitious project, Ortega has said, includes a conventional canal, a "dry canal" -- a rail line -- as well as two airports and an oil pipeline to move petroleum from the Caribbean to the Pacific.

Work on the canal should begin in May 2014 after a feasibility study is completed, the president said.

Benitez said this is not cause for alarm, as the Nicaraguan project is not firm and even if built would need to be wider and deeper than the Panama waterway.

Plans to build a canal across Nicaragua date back many years, but were overtaken in 1914 when the 82-kilometer (51-mile) Panama Canal was completed.

In recent years, however, Nicaraguan governments have revived the concept as a way to promote development in the poorest country in the Americas after Haiti.