Hong Kong firm will build new Panama Canal in Nicaragua

"Nicaragua Canal" will be completed in six years.

An obscure company, HK Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Company, owned by a virtually unknown Chinese businessman named Wang Jing is now conducting feasibility studies for a new canal through Nicaragua that will be three times longer than the Panama Canal.

Construction of the US$40 billion canal is expected to start in 2014 and will be completed by 2020. Wang said the Nicaragua Canal will be 286 kilometers long and capable of bearing 400,000 ton cargo ships.

"Global trade has become so developed that the world needs a new canal," Wang said.

A contract signed last June 14 with the Nicaraguan government allows the Chinese company to invest in the project and run the canal for 50 years with a possible extension of another half-century.

Some Nicaraguan lawmakers and residents have expressed reservations about the company's competence, given that this appears to be its first attempt to engineer any significant infrastructure project.

"We don't want it (the canal) to become an international joke, and we don't want it to turn into an example of Chinese investment failures," said Wang.

Very little is known about Wang, who is said to be 40 years old. He is chairman of HKND Group based in Hong Kong.

Wang has offered little information about himself, saying he comes from an ordinary Chinese family in Beijing and that he studied traditional Chinese medicine before becoming a businessman.

Sources said Wang has investments in telecommunications, mining and several other industries. In 2010, he invested in Xinwei Telecom Enterprise Group, a medium-sized Chinese telecommunications firm.

He was credited with turning it around financially, partly by expanding into overseas markets, including Nicaragua, where Xinwei was granted an operating license in November 2012.