Nicaragua Canal Faces Numerous Challenges To Get Off Ground

Fortune:

The expansion of the Panama Canal has overcome labor disputes, legal battles, and technical hurdles, and is now on the verge of completion. Infrastructure projects of such massive scale almost inevitably face big delays and cost overruns—but backers have a way of finding the money and resolve to finish what they’ve started.
That may not apply, though, to a project that aims to build a $50 billion, 172.7-mile canal across Nicaragua—almost four times longer than Panama’s. The passage is intended to compete for inter-ocean traffic by servicing ships too big to pass through even Panama’s expanded canal, and would be one of the largest infrastructure projects in human history.
Nicaragua and its people could certainly benefit from a working canal. Panama’s has driven double-digit growth in recent years, anchoring a transport sector that makes up a quarter of the country’s $42.65 billion GDP as of 2013, and helping push per-capita income above $11,000. Nicaragua, by contrast, is the poorest country in Central America, with GDP of just $11.26 billion in 2013, and per-capita income of just over $1,800.
But the project faces obstacles as big as its ambitions—many of them internal. Chinese billionaire Wang Jing, who heads the Hong Kong Nicaragua Development Group that’s leading the project, has personally funded much of the preliminary work—but in 2015, he lost more than 80% of his fortune in the Chinese stock market rout. Financial problems, along with ongoing environmental and engineering reviews, are causing rolling delays.
Nicaragua and its people could certainly benefit from a working canal. Panama’s has driven double-digit growth in recent years, anchoring a transport sector that makes up a quarter of the country’s $42.65 billion GDP as of 2013, and helping push per-capita income above $11,000. Nicaragua, by contrast, is the poorest country in Central America, with GDP of just $11.26 billion in 2013, and per-capita income of just over $1,800.
But the project faces obstacles as big as its ambitions—many of them internal. Chinese billionaire Wang Jing, who heads the Hong Kong Nicaragua Development Group that’s leading the project, has personally funded much of the preliminary work—but in 2015, he lost more than 80% of his fortune in the Chinese stock market rout. Financial problems, along with ongoing environmental and engineering reviews, are causing rolling delays.

This is never going to happen.  Whodathunkit?