How some trade is quite literally drying up on the Panama Canal.

Hello and you're listening to the Marketplace Morning Report live from the BBC World Service,

I'm Liana Byrne and a very good morning to you.

The Panama Canal has extended restrictions on vessels as it battles its ongoing drought.

A few years ago, a few weeks ago rather, the Panama Canal authority limited the number

of vessels authorized to pass through the waterway to 32 each day.

It's also limited the amount of cargo ships can carry.

In our time, Ferns complained this adds delays and extra fees and flating shipping costs.

The BBC's Roger Hearing asked the deputy administrator of the Panama Canal,

Ilia Espino de Marotta, why the restrictions had to be introduced.

We've had this restrictions every dry season, maybe not to this level,

depending on the rainfall of the rainy season.

The problem is, this dry season has been very extended,

so that 44-foot draft that we are allowing the ships to come with right now,

might extend beyond the traditional time.

So it looks like the extended dry season will impact that the draft will not recuperate

as fast as in other summers.

OK, and the effect will be that they will restrict the number of ships that can go through presumably.

What sort of scale of that will there be?

OK, normally we transit between 31 and 38 vessels per day.

That's our range, depending on the reservations and the queue.

Right now, we're on purpose limiting to 32 per day average,

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