Posted on August 27, 2025
The Panama Canal Authority plans to sell rights to two, yet-to-be-built ports to bring in more operators and limit the influence of any one group, specifically Geneva-based Mediterranean Shipping Co. and China’s state-run Cosco.
The head of the authority, Ricaurte Vásquez Morales, said he wants to bring in more competition now that MSC and China’s largest shipping company have emerged as significant players in a clash between the U.S. and China over who controls two existing Panama Canal ports.
In March, U.S. asset manager BlackRock and MSC struck an agreement to buy majority stakes in the ports from Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison. The deal followed pressure from President Trump, who had argued that Hutchison’s China connection was a security concern and had threatened to take over the Panama Canal.
Beijing has since threatened to block the sale unless Cosco becomes an equal partner and shareholder of the ports, according to people familiar with the matter.
Whatever the final shape of the deal, Vásquez said, he expects the bidding process for the new ports to be completed by the end of the year and for bids to come in from a number of other potential operators.
APM Terminals, the port unit of Danish shipping giant A.P. Moller-Maersk, and its French rival CMA CGM are both expected to make offers, according to people familiar with the process. In April, Maersk bought the Panama Canal Railway Co. which operates a 47-mile line along the waterway and moves containers between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
“We need to boost container capacity and bring in more players for an equal playing field,” Vásquez said in an interview.
Going on sale are two plots of land on each side of the Panama Canal, he said. The winning bidders will build the port facilities and get to run them for 20 years. The port on the Atlantic side, at Isla Telfers, will be near where a natural gas terminal is also under construction.
Cosco would be barred from participating in the bidding process for the new ports because it is a government entity, Vásquez said.
MSC, which already runs a terminal on the Pacific side of the Canal, agreed to buy the ports of Balboa and Cristóbal together with BlackRock as part of a bigger, $22.8 billion deal that includes dozens of other Hutchison-operated ports around the world.
BlackRock, MSC and Hutchison have signaled that they are open to Cosco’s taking a stake in the Balboa and Cristóbal ports, according to people familiar with those talks, though the Trump administration would likely oppose such a deal. China has leverage over the three parties involved in the transaction: BlackRock and Hutchison have business interests in China, and MSC is one of the biggest movers of Chinese exports around the world.
A State Department official involved in the matter declined to comment, as did BlackRock. MSC didn’t return calls for comment.
Once the concessions for the new ports are signed, Vásquez said he estimated that they would add around $500 million to the Panama Canal’s roughly $5 billion in annual revenue.
