The Spanish-led consortium leading the Panama Canal expansion project is denying it has stopped work on the project over a dispute over who will pay for cost overruns.  But workers were nowhere to be seen and the heavy machinery in the incomplete canal sat idle.

Spanish builder Sacyr says the government's canal authority had broken off talks on who will pay some A$1.78 billion needed to complete the project, and that 10,000 jobs are at risk.  The canal authority says it would not “yield to blackmail”, and is demanding that the consortium resume work on the expansion.

Five percent of the world’s shipping traffic goes through those locks, and the once the expansion project is complete that figure will rise.  At the moment the biggest ships that can navigate the canal carry up to 5,000 containers – Panamax sized ships, now considered quaint in the world of shipping.  The expansion project adds a huge new set of locks that can handle Post Panamax and New Panamax sized ships that can carry three times as many containers.