The Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported on June 19 that the Panama Canal's revenues for fiscal year 2024 (October 2023-September 2024) are expected to grow by 2.7%, which is expected to reach a new record high. Record drought has limited the number of navigable vessels, but rising "tolls" have pushed up total revenues.

　　The Panama Canal Authority forecasts that total revenues for fiscal year 2024 are expected to reach $5.102 billion.

　　The Panama Canal, which connects the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, is about 80 kilometers long, with an elevation difference of nearly 30 meters, and large ships need a lot of fresh water to raise or lower the water level in order to pass through the canal, which adopts a hierarchical approach to locks.

　　In the summer of 2023 the number of ships navigating in a single day was limited due to a severe shortage of fresh water.

　　Total Panama Canal revenues in FY 2023 were approximately $4.968 billion, an increase of 14.9% over FY 2022. While the number of vessel passages on a stand-alone basis declined by 1.5%, tolls, which account for approximately 70% of the Canal's total revenues, still amounted to $3.348 billion, an increase of 10.6% year-over-year.

　　As the problem of restricted navigation continues, long lines of large ships waiting to enter the channel have become commonplace.

　　The Panama Canal Authority is even in the business of selling "queue-jumping rights," allowing later-arriving ships to pay for time, and the extra cost of those ships trying to get through the canal as quickly as possible has pushed up the bidding price for space.

　　Bloomberg news agency sources said that in 2023, there are even ships to 4 million U.S. dollars in bidding for boat space.