The number of vessels that passed through the Panama Canal edged down slightly to an average of 32.5 ships per day in August compared to the 32.6 per day in the previous month, its authority said in a bulletin released on Wednesday.
While traffic through the world's second-busiest inter-oceanic waterway has increased since last year, when it lifted passage restrictions related to a severe drought, it is still not fully allocating the 36 slots per day on offer.
The canal is on track to register gross income of some $5 billion in the fiscal year ending this month as planned in the country's budget, the head of the waterway's authority, Ricaurte Vasquez, said this week on the sidelines of a conference.
The canal expects to move some 500 million metric tons of cargo by the end of this fiscal year, he added. In the fiscal year that ended in September 2024, the waterway's income rose to $4.99 billion despite a severe drought that forced a reduction in passage. It handled 423 million tons of cargo through its locks in that period.
"We are going to meet the goals, especially what the central government required from us," Vasquez told reporters.
The imposition of US tariffs has prompted many shippers to accelerate imports ahead of the Christmas season, which contributed to the canal's improved performance this fiscal year, he added.
Ship traffic is expected to fall in the coming months, but the passage of larger vessels carrying more tons of cargo would offset the expected reduction in the number of ships, Vasquez said.
(Reporting by Natalia Siniawski, Marianna Parraga and Elida Moreno; Editing by Sarah Morland and Jamie Freed)