Just days after the inauguration of new, larger locks on the Panama Canal, a Japanese freighter on Friday set a new record for the highest-ever transit fee paid to the waterway, the canal authority said, according to dpa. Mitsui OSK Lines paid 829,468 dollars for the transit from the Pacific to the Atlantic through the Central American isthmus, breaking a record set less than a week ago at the canal's inauguration. At 337 meters long and 48 meters wide, with a capacity of 10,000 containers, the freighter MOL Benefactor is one of the New Panamax mega-ships for which the nine-year, 5.25-billion-dollar canal expansion was undertaken. Before the expansion, the largest ship that could fit through the canal's century-old locks had a capacity of 4,400 containers. Now ships carrying as many as 14,000 containers can take the shortcut between the oceans, saving the time and money of navigating around South America. The expanded canal was inaugurated on Sunday. The first ship to transit the new locks, the Chinese Cosco Shipping Panama, paid a then-record transit fee of 575,545 dollars. Transit fees are based on ship volume, so larger ships pay larger fees. In the next decade the Panama Canal's direct contribution to state coffers is expected to triple, from 1 billion to 3 billion dollars.
