The Panama Canal had a closing of its fiscal year 2018 with a record tonnage of 442.1 million tons of the Panama Canal (PC / UMS), which constitutes an increase of 9.5 percent over the previous year 2017.
With this number, the Panama Canal has exceeded the load projections of 429.4 million tons of PC / UMS for fiscal year 2018, as well as the 403.8 million tons of PC / UMS recorded in fiscal year 2017.
According to Jorge L Quijano, “The Panama Canal continues to exceed our expectations, reinforcing every day the importance of the expansion of the waterway and its impact on world maritime trade”, as the Administrator of the Panama Canal has commented.
This increase was definitely driven by the transit of transport of liquefied petroleum gas (or LPG for its acronym) and liquefied natural gas (or LNG for its acronym), container ships, chemical tankers and vehicle transporters.
The container segment continued to serve as the leading market segment for tonnage through the canal, representing 159 million tons of PC / UMS of the total cargo, of which 112.6 million tons of PC / UMS transited the expanded channel . Oil tankers, including LPG and LNG carriers, followed closely with a total of 130.3 million tons of PC / UMS.
The third classified segments included bulk carriers with 73.7 million tons of PC / UMS, on the other hand vehicle carriers took fourth place with 49.5 million tons of PC / UMS observed during the year.
In terms of cargo tonnage, the main routes that used the Panama Canal in fiscal year 2018 were between Asia and the US east coast. The west coast of South America and the east coast of the USA UU., The west coast of South America and Europe, the west coast of Central America and the east coast of the United States and South America intercostera.
The Panama Canal said that the main users during the period were the United States, China, Mexico, Chile and Japan, while approximately 62.8 percent of the total cargo that transits the canal had its origin or destination in the United States.
