\u00a0Maritime\u00a0<\/span>Authority (AMP) has taken possession of both ports by decree to ensure uninterrupted operations, said Alberto Aleman Zubieta, head of the technical team overseeing the transition, after the ruling became final upon publication.<\/p>\nMAERSK AND MSC UNITS GET TEMPORARY CONCESSIONS<\/p>\n
The government said it\u00a0had approved\u00a0two temporary concession contracts with AMP, lasting up to 18 months, for the operation of the Balboa and Cristobal terminals. APM Terminals Panama will operate the Balboa port while TIL Panama, part of MSC, will run operations at Cristobal.<\/p>\n
APM Terminals confirmed on Tuesday that it has begun temporary operations at Balboa.<\/p>\n
The move could disrupt CK Hutchison’s proposed $23 billion sale of dozens of ports worldwide, including the Panamanian terminals, to a consortium led by BlackRock and MSC.<\/p>\n
Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino said the temporary contracts had been issued as a “legitimate tool that respects asset ownership”.<\/p>\n
“Let me be clear, this does not imply an expropriation of those assets, but rather their use to ensure the operation of the ports until their real value is determined for the corresponding actions. I repeat, this is not an expropriation,\u201d Mulino said in a televised address on Monday afternoon.<\/p>\n
Mulino said the arrangement would remain in place while the state develops a new, “competitive” framework\u00a0for awarding the concession\u00a0in future, “with the humility not to repeat the mistakes of the past”.<\/p>\n
He said neither port operations nor employment would\u00a0be affected\u00a0during the\u00a0process.<\/p>\n
The Panama president\u2019s office did not immediately respond to a request outside office hours for comment on CK Hutchison’s statement.<\/p>\n
Maersk and MSC did not immediately have a comment on the matter.<\/p>\n
(Reuters)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
maritime professional<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hong Kong conglomerate CK Hutchison said on Tuesday Panama authorities had threatened its employees with criminal prosecution if they refused to leave two strategic canal ports at the centre of a legal battle that has embroiled Beijing and Washington. CK Hutchison said Panama’s decision to cancel key port contracts and grant temporary licences to Maersk …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":76395,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-maritime-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76394\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/76395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}