【Epoch Times News, January 1, 2025】
Nicaragua and China have marked the 3rd anniversary of establishing diplomatic relations. Despite reaching a series of large infrastructure cooperation agreements in 2023, including airport expansion and railway construction, the only tangible plan to date is Nicaragua’s procurement of buses from Beijing. The bilateral trade volume still shows a significant gap.
According to the Nicaraguan media outlet “La Prensa,” the last batch of buses purchased by Nicaragua from China arrived in the country in December 2024. Beijing exported a total of 3,000 buses to Nicaragua, yet the authoritarian government of Nicaragua has been unwilling to disclose the actual purchase price of these buses.
Nicaragua announced the severance of diplomatic ties with Taiwan on December 9, 2021, with the country estimating its exports to China at 6 million US dollars for that year. Official data indicates that this figure increased to 34.5 million US dollars in 2022 and reached 44 million US dollars in 2023.
However, experts interviewed by “La Prensa” expressed that considering President Daniel Ortega’s authoritarian regime’s efforts to make China one of the main trading partners, the pace of such trade growth is actually quite slow. In comparison, official figures show that China’s exports to Nicaragua in 2023 amounted to about 1.385 billion US dollars, accounting for 12.32% of Nicaragua’s total imports.
In the third quarter of 2024, China’s exports to Nicaragua increased, reflecting a rising demand for Chinese goods in the Nicaraguan market. Meanwhile, Nicaraguan Chinese-owned stores imported a large quantity of various inexpensive products, leading to a sharp decline in sales for local stores and even triggering a wave of closures.
Nicaraguan economist Óscar René Vargas also holds a negative view on the various projects jointly launched by the Nicaraguan authorities and Beijing. He pointed out that the proposed transoceanic canal is a prime example, demonstrating that these construction plans not only lack thorough evaluation but also feasibility.
In November 2024, at the China-Latin America-Caribbean Business Summit, Ortega showcased a map of the planned transoceanic canal in Nicaragua. The agreement between China and Nicaragua includes the construction of a deep-water port in Bluefields, located in the east of Nicaragua, as part of the canal project.
Vargas told “La Prensa” that the transoceanic canal is not only costly but also, from a geopolitical perspective, with the U.S. President-elect Trump previously criticizing China’s growing influence around the Panama Canal. If there were to be a Nicaraguan canal built by the Chinese, one can only imagine Trump’s response.
(Courtesy of Central News Agency, with deletions)