Question

Can I get a summary of this article in details and what is your position and opinion on the topic of the Nicaragua channel?

Nicaragua's dream of building an interoceanic canal fades in the face of uncertainty over the 50 billion dollars needed to finance it and China's decision to open relations with its rival in Panama, according to analysts. The project "has been totally de-funded because it did not meet the reliability requirements it needed" for its execution, the former opposition university professor and university professor Eliseo Núñez told AFP. Nearly five years ago, Chinese magnate Wang Jing, owner of HK Nicaragua Canal Development (HKND), won an exclusive concession from the Nicaraguan government to design, build and operate, for up to a century, a 276-km-long canal , The biggest in the world. With the promise of making Nicaragua the richest country in the region, Wang opened the works in late 2014, but a year later he lost most of his fortune valued at 10.2 billion dollars, according to Bloomberg, and disappeared . "It is a ghost, it has not reappeared," environmental lawyer Mónica López, author of the book on the channel "The delivery of a country," told AFP. The financial feasibility studies that McKinsey & Company made according to HKND have not been published and countries like Iran, which expressed interest in the project, have not publicly specified an offer. The construction of access roads to the canal on the south Pacific coast are suspended and the excavation works of 5 billion cubic meters of land, which would begin in 2016, were postponed indefinitely. The channel "has lost interest from the weakening of the Chinese investor, and the Nicaraguan government has no capacity to move the project by itself," said Víctor Campos, director of the environmentalist Centro Humboldt. Communities of the south, whose lands would open the trench to make way for large vessels, continue their normal life. "It is true that there have been delays but the company (HKND) is working there, what happens is that it is a very big project," said Manuel Coronel Kautz, president of the Interoceanic Grand Canal Authority of Nicaragua. "It's slow but normal," he said. The reestablishment of diplomatic relations between China and Panama last June also pushed Beijing away as a potential investor in the Nicaraguan canal. "China will invest 25 billion dollars (per year) in different countries of Latin America, but Nicaragua is not on its radar," said former diplomat Mauricio Díaz. "There has always been speculation about the possible interest of the Chinese state in the concession (canal), but the fact is that the 19 trade agreements that China signed last year with Panama indicate that its interest is concentrated" in that country, Lopez agreed. "I'm not sure that China is behind the channel, it seems that Wang acted alone" and "that Nicaragua fell into a kind of international scam", weighing by his side the ex-deputy Núñez. He warned that Nicaragua faces legal uncertainty because the concession of the canal project gives HKND many advantages. The law prevents Nicaragua from taking civil and criminal actions against the investor in case of default, although it can repeal the concession with 60% of the votes of the Parliament, in the hands of the ruling party. The concession law "is a sword of Damocles that weighs on the peasants because it authorizes the expropriation of land not only in the canal strip, but throughout Nicaragua," said opposition leader Violeta Granera. And even if it is not done, it is "tied to several subprojects" that will make it possible to do business free of audits, he observed.

Answer 1

The Nicaraguan canal was an intended shipping route via Nicaragua to link the Caribbean Sea with the Pacific Ocean. Scientists were worried about the project's ecological effects, since Lake Nicaragua is the chief freshwater basin of Central America   .In 2013, Nicaragua's Assembly ratified a bill to sanction a fifty-year concession to fund & manage the venture to the private HKND Group led by Wang Jing (a Chinese tycoon). In 2015 some media reports stated that the plan would be delayed & perhaps even stand cancelled since Wang's personal wealth had lessened considerably as an outcome of the stock market crash of 2015.

In my opinion the project would have created many jobs for the population of Nicaragua and would have helped the country deal with poverty. No doubt there were some ecological concerns but, such concerns always ensue such projects like channel constructions