Panama's ports expect shipping container volumes to grow by a fifth this year despite a slowing US economy as Chinese trade surges, the head of the country's top maritime body said on Wednesday.
Fernando Solórzano told Reuters that he expects the country's principal ports to handle up to five million 20, foot equivalent units (TEUs) - the size of a standard shipping container, in 2008.

In 2007, Panamanian ports handled just under 4.1 million TEUs, up from 2.7 million TEUs in 2006, thanks in part to trans-shipping through the Pacific port of Balboa on the mouth of the Panama Canal. Balboa is run by a subsidiary of Hong Kong's Hutchison Whampoa.
Despite a slowdown in US consumer demand and the possible drop in trade between China and the US Eastern seaboard, Mr. Solórzano said that the fundamentals are in place for continued growth in Panama's shipping sector. 'If everything goes well and continues as it has been, I believe we can reach this goal (of five million TEUs),' he said.
Rising imports such as cars and consumer goods to China are expected to offset the slowing US economy at Panama's ports.
Partly as a result, Mr Solórzano said, there is still enough business for the construction of another Pacific mega-port to be feasible.
Despite billions of dollars in investment in recent years, Panama still lacks the port infrastructure to handle the huge mineral imports from Latin America that China needs to fuel its economic growth.
He said that China's largest shipping conglomerate, China Ocean Shipping Co, was still interested in establishing a new billion-dollar port that could be located at the Pacific entrance of the Panama Canal, not far from Balboa.
Panama had planned to auction the rights to operate the port but is reassessing the project after a number of firms, including Danish shipping and oil group AP Moeller-Maersk, dropped out of the running.
Mr Solórzano said that the government would soon make a decision on how to move forward with the project, which could now be awarded by a direct contract and not via a tender process.

Panama's Hacienda La Esmeralda gourmet "geisha" coffee, which has broken world price records in online coffee auctions, is now so sought after that the farm is planning its own Internet auction this year.
In a bold step never before attempted by a single estate, the farm in the cool highlands above Panama's western town of Boquete will put its entire crop up for bidding in a private auction, farm administrator Daniel Peterson said.
"We are going to auction all of the geisha together. This is the fairest form of exchange," Peterson told Reuters in the warehouse storing this year's harvest, just 200 60-kg bags.
The farm's coffee is popular with high-end roasters and connoisseurs drawn to its sweet jasmine flavors that win the rare beans high scores at cupping events.
The coffee had cultivated a reputation similar to fine wines grown in specific regions, and is now one of the world's most expensive varieties.
Last year Hacienda's small lot sold at an unprecedented $130 per pound at the "Best of Panama" online auction, where bids were taken by telephone after passing the computer system's maximum price of $99.99 per pound.
Peterson said the geisha coffee would likely be sold in roughly 120-kg lots, with the green coffee shipped in vacuum packs. The date of the auction has not been set although the farm is aiming for May. Bidding could start at $5 per pound.
Buyers are both excited and wary of the experiment.
"We are going to participate in the auction but I am worried about the pricing, it is expensive," Yuji Sato, a coffee buyer for Japanese firm Wataru & Co., told Reuters through an interpreter after a recent visit to the famed farm.
Sato and some other high-profile buyers say they prefer to negotiate directly instead of competing at an auction.
FARM EXPANSION --"It would be hard for us to buy all of our coffees at auction," said David Pohl from northern California specialty roaster Equator Coffee, which purchased 60 kg of the Hacienda's geisha coffee last year at just under $13 per pound.
Pohl said he strongly backed an idea by the farm's owners to auction the lots according to the exact date the beans were picked, given the coffee's fame.
"I love that idea. There are quality differences to be noted when there are different dates," Pohl said by telephone.
The move by the farm shows how far online auctions have come since they were started in the late 1990s as a way to separate high-quality coffees from the conventional market.
It took time for the model to catch on but it has worked well for small producers like Panama, where the scarcity of the fine, high-altitude geisha beans helps boost prices.
The country produces fewer than 180,000 60-kg bags of green washed arabica per year, less than 10 percent the volume grown by neighboring Costa Rica.
The geisha coffees come from a variety introduced to Panama in the 1960s but virtually abandoned early on due to low yields.