Professor Elam

Oscar Hernandez asked a good question.  Why build an inland port with all the necessary unloading of a ship, cross country transport, unloading, storage, and then loading again only to finally unload at the end destination.  Doesn’t cost accounting teach up that Just in Time seeks to minimize setups (okay Oscar didn’t go that far but I am trying to tie this to accounting after all.

Point is, great question Oscar. In fact one hundred years ago an alternate canal route was put forward through  Nicaragua.   Click on the link to read about the history and, gee guess what,  in 2004 Nicaragua proposed it again! This time the Canal would be big enough to handle the ships Panama cannot.  Panama can handle up to 65,000 tons, this proposal would go to a Refrigerator Perry size of 250,000 tons!  This of course would run about $25 B or 25 times the N. annual budget. And of course the environmentalists are fearful a snake might be harmed in the process. 

Indeed this has been the subject of an Oct 22 article in Business Week.   This article contains a lot of detail about the various plans and current constraints. 

Question, if this were in Qatar, would they build the Canal, answer, you bet.

If You Tube with no earnings is worth $1.65 B, would a canal that would as Oscar points out eliminate the need for inland ports be worth 15 times that, hey, get Dubai on the phone, we need a loan!

DLE