The Nicaraguan government has hired a Hong Kong-based company, whose previous business seems to only reflect telecommunications, to build a $40 billion trans-oceanic structure that is believed to rival the Panama Canal, USA Today reported.
The legislation was spearheaded by the leftist political part in Nicaragua and was passed by a 61-28 vote, but contains no specific information on the structure's impact on the country's future economy.
But President Daniel Ortega and his supporters believe that the this project will give rise to Nicaraguan infrastructure bringing tens of thousands of jobs thereby fueling an economic boom that would trump the prosperity noted in the time after the U.S.-built Panama Canal was created, according to USA Today.
"One of Nicaragua's great riches is it geographic position, that's why this idea has always been around," said Jacinto Suarez, a Sandinista congressman, in a debate on Thursday. "Global trade demands that this canal is built because it's necessary. The data shows that maritime transport is constantly growing and that makes this feasible. Opposing it is unpatriotic."
The project has been assigned to a little-known Hong Kong businessman, Wang Jing, who has since hired some of the world's greatest minds in infrastructure projects, The Washington Post reported..
One of those people, Bill Wild, chief project adviser for the project now coined HK Nicaragua, is a Western expert in infrastructure projects said more data needed to be collected to better understand the program's yield.
"There's a compelling commercial reason to build the canal," he told The Post. "We have to prove now that the actual rate of return that the investors will get is adequate."
So far, the Nicaraguan government officials have granted Jing a 50-year concession to plan and build the canal with an option for another 50.
Other factors like global warming play a huge role in his the shipping business as ice continues to melt on the Arctic, new pathways are being created that may be a more sound alternative than crossing the waterways of Central America, according to The Post.
"Looking at the changing flows and where the growth is in the world economy personally I'm not seeing it. I wouldn't invest my money in it," said Rosalyn Wilson, author of the U.S. logistics industry's annual report and a senior business analyst at one of the world's leading transportation consultancy firms, Delcan Corp., to the publication. "It's addressing a need that definitely is not here now, and I'm not sure if it's a 'Build it and they will come' sort of thing."
