LatinNews Daily - 19 November 2024

*Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega has presented a new route for the ‘Gran Canal’ which would link the country’s Caribbean and Pacific coasts. He unveiled the new route at the XVII China-Latin America & the Caribbean (LAC) business summit, which is taking place in Nicaragua’s capital, Managua, in a bid to drum up interest in the project from China. In 2013 the Ortega government awarded the US$50bn concession to build, operate, and manage the initiative to a Chinese company, Hong Kong Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Company (HKND). However, the project failed to materialise and HKND has since been dissolved. In May this year, Nicaragua’s 92-member unicameral legislature revoked the law (840) which granted the concession to HKND. Yesterday Ortega also revealed a new route for the canal, which initially was conceived as stretching from Bluefields, Nicaragua’s main Caribbean port, in the South Atlantic Autonomous Region (Raas), to a proposed port at Brito, on the Pacific coast in the southern department of Rivas passing through Lake Nicaragua (Cocibolca). Instead, Ortega said yesterday that it could pass from Bluefields to Corinto port, Chinandega department, via Lake Managua (Xolotlán). Yesterday Ortega also announced a string of agreements with Chinese companies, including an engineering, procurement, and construction contract for Bluefields port which was signed by the transport & infrastructure ministry and China’s CAMC Engineering. This is the latest sign of burgeoning ties between the two countries which established bilateral relations in December 2021 after the Ortega government severed relations with Taiwan.