LIMA, PERU – Behind every major infrastructure project lies something less visible than concrete or steel: a leadership structure capable of managing decisions, risks, contracts, and resources for years. At the Panama Canal, this capacity has become one of the assets underpinning a new phase of transformation aimed at expanding the country’s role in international trade , not only as an interoceanic waterway but also as a logistics platform.
That was one of the ideas shared by Ilya Espino de Marotta, Deputy Administrator and Sustainability Officer of the Panama Canal Authority (ACP) , during the PMI LATAM Conference 2026 organized by the Project Management Institute (PMI) in this South American capital, where she explained how the experience accumulated in the expansion now serves to govern a portfolio that includes the Rio Indio Lake, two port terminals, an energy corridor and a logistics corridor.
The recent history of the Canal offers a point of reference. The expansion, approved by referendum and built with an investment of $5.25 billion, has now been in operation for a decade. Although the project experienced a delay of about a year and a half, it remained within budget, and today the Neopanamax locks generate more than half of the Canal’s revenue with approximately a quarter of its transits.
The result connects with a central discussion from the PMI meeting: a project doesn’t end when the work is delivered . Its value emerges when the infrastructure demonstrates capacity, productivity, revenue, or resilience.
In the Panamanian case, achieving that result required a specific governance structure. For the expansion, the Panama Canal Authority (ACP) concentrated critical functions related to engineering, finance, environment, dredging, and execution within a single vice presidency, preventing the project from depending on multiple corporate areas for each decision. Espino de Marotta described it as the creation of “a mini Panama Canal within the Panama Canal .
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