After meeting on Wednesday, after almost a year, the members of the Management Board of the Authority of the Panama Canal, a meeting at which the informed of the details of the investment plan worth 8.5 billion dollars to strengthen competitiveness, sustainability and modernization of the interaceanic channel, yesterday the President of the Republic of Panama, José Raúl Mulino, affirmed the State's intention to participate in the management of the two ports of Balboa and Cristóbal located at the two Panama Canal entrances.

Currently, the two ports are operated by Panama Ports Company, a company owned by Hutchison Port Holdings (Hutchison Ports) of the CK Hutchison Holdings group of Hong Kong. The Chinese management of the two Panamanian ports has begun to arouse scandal in recent months: at the beginning of his second term, the US President Donald Trump had threatened to bring back to the United States the ownership of the Panama Canal, rejected with disdain by the Panamanian president himself ( of 21 and 23 January 2025); subsequently the initiatives adopted by Trump to contain the expansion of China's interests in numerous regions, including Panama, has led the authorities to apparently aligned with the American strategy for contain and reduce China's presence in the domestic market and in foreign countries, to examine the repercussions on the national economy of the Chinese management of the two Panamanian ports, repercussions that - after 25 years of running the Panama Ports Company - the government has not being in line with those envisaged in the act of the assignment of the concession, but rather much lower ( of 27 and 29 January, 4 February and 8 April 2025). In the meantime, a consortium consisting of the terminal company Terminal Investment Limited (TiL) of the Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) and the American investment firm BlackRock and its fund Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP) investments, have submitted an offer to acquire 80% of the share capital of Hutchison Ports, offer that includes a proposal to buy the 90% of the capital of Panama Ports Company ( of 4 March 2025).

The project sketched yesterday by Mulino provides that the State Panamanian partnership with the TiL/BlackRock-GIP consortium, considering the contractual relationship with Panama to be concluded Ports Company: "Currently," said the president Panamanian - I don't see a continuation of this contract with Panama Ports, whether it is modified or not, nor - specified referring to law number 5 of 16 January 1997 which had approved the concession contract - the creation of a new law for the contract". When asked for an explanation of the reasons behind this partnership proposal, Mulino He candidly replied that "it's better this way".

Currently, however, this project is colliding head-on with the intention expressed by the CK Hutchison Group to include rather a Chinese investor in the consortium to which it should go the control of Hutchison Ports ( of 28 July 2025). At stake - recalled Mulino - there are also the lawsuits brought to revoke the concession contract, and the outcome of the audit on the concession contract initiated by the Contraloría General de la República de Panamá, initiative for which the Panamanian president has expressed full "All of us," he said, referring to the contract, "have seen what we didn't get out of it. That contract, when it is been renewed for another 25 years, not approved by the contralor, and yet it has begun. What is requested of the Court - he specified - is the annulment of the contract for lack of approval". The issue is in fact, under the examination of the Supreme Court of Justice, from which - added Mulino - "we will wait for the verdict".