China is in talks to build an alternative to the Panama Canal that would link Colombia’s Atlantic and Pacific coasts by rail – a move that Bogotá also hopes will spur Washington to push for Congressional approval of a US-Colombia free-trade pact.
“It’s a real proposal . . . and it is quite advanced,” Juan Manuel Santos, Colombia’s president, told the Financial Times. “The studies [the Chinese] have made on the costs of transporting per tonne, the cost of investment, they all work out.”
The mooted rail link is the latest example of China’s increasingly aggressive lending to the developing world, as evidenced by Chinese banks having lent more to developing countries over the past two years than the World Bank.
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