After two years of decline in ship transits due to the low water level in the Panama Canal due to decreased atmospheric precipitation, in 2025 maritime traffic in the Central American waterway has returned to growth being 13,451 ships transited, with an increase of +14.1% on 2024, including 12,092 vessels of high draught (+15.9%), including 3,397 vessels Neopanamax (+15.2%). The PC/UMS tonnage of the ships transited is amounted to 493.2 million tonnes (+12.8%) and ships last year they passed through the canal carrying 250.5 million tons of goods (+14.2%). In 2025, the value of the rights of transit paid by ships was 4.12 billion dollars (+22.0%).

In the fourth quarter of 2025 alone, the channel was crossed by 3,383 ships, with an increase of +1.4% on the same period of the previous year, of which 3,110 vessels of high draft (+2.5%), including 882 Neopanamax ships (+6.5%). Ships transited transported a total of 67.3 million tons (+10.2%).

Meanwhile, Panamanian ports closed the year 2025 with a traffic of 118.9 million tons of goods, with a slight increase of +0.7% on the previous year, of which 53.6 million tons of bulk (+2.0%), 770 thousand tons of cargo (-7.9%) and 64.6 million tonnes of cargo in containers (-0.2%). The latter traffic flow, counted in terms of 20-foot boxes handled, was equal to 9,915,357 TEUs (+3.6%). In the ports of Balboa and Cristóbal only operated by the Panama Ports Company of the CK Hutchison Holdings group Hong Kong, which last week saw its validity of the concession contract by the Supreme Court of Panama Justice ( of 30 January 2026), containerized traffic was equal to respectively to 2,676,768 TEUs (+1.8%) and 1,210,528 TEUs (+9.4%).