The Hong Kong CK Hutchison firm is selling its control participation in a unit that operates the ports of Panama to a group that includes Blackrock, says the administration of US President Donald Trump accumulates pressure to curb Chinese influence in the region.
The sale of licenses will result in the consortium to obtain a 90 percent participation in Panama Ports Company, which is the operator of the ports of Balboa and Cristóbal in the country.
CK Hutchison has been operating the ports in the Pacific and Atlantic entries of the channel for more than two decades.
Although not financially linked to the Chinese government, Hong Kong companies are subject to state supervision.
The channel, the second most busy interoceanic river route in the world, is key to global and critical commercial flows for the United States trade, since two thirds of the goods that pass through the channel are directed to or outside the United States.
The sale of Panama port licenses held by the multimillionaire conglomerate unit Li Ka-shing to a consortium that includes Blackrock, global infrastructure partners and terminal investment will give you control of an interest of 80 percent in the Hutchison ports for an equity value of US14.21 billion ($ A22.82 billion).
It will obtain control of 43 ports that comprise 199 Literas in 23 countries while offering cash more than US19 billion for the Hong Kong headquarters.
The sale does not imply any interest in Hutchison Port Holdings Trust, which operates ports in Hong Kong and Shenzhen, as well as in southern China, or any other port in China Continental, said CK Hutchison.
The consortium said it has agreed that negotiations will be exclusive for a period of 145 days, the company said.
In January, the American senator Ted Cruz, republican president of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, expressed concerns that the Chinese authorities could exploit or block the passage through the channel and that the ports “give to China observation posts ready” to take measures.
“This situation, I think, publishes acute risks for the national security of the United States,” Cruz said.
The Secretary of State of the United States, Marco Rubio, visited Panama in early February and told President José Raúl Mulino that Panama had to reduce Chinese influence on the channel or face possible reprisals from the United States.
Mulino rejected the idea that China had some control over channel operations.
Panama leaves China’s Belt and Road initiative after Rubio’s visit, causing the condemnation of officials in Beijing.
But although he focused a lot of attention on Trump’s threat to resume control of the channel, his administration trained his sights in the Hutchison ports, the Hong Kong headquarters consortium that manages the key ports at any end of the channel.
Hutchison Ports had recently received an extension of 25 years without offer to execute the ports, but an audit that looked that extension was already underway.
The observers believed that the audit was a preliminary step towards reimbursement of the contract, but in recent weeks they had started in recent weeks that an American company was being aligned to take care.
with AP
