The Panama Canal is experiencing an uptick in traffic and generating more lucrative bids to transit the trade artery, aligning with a spike in demand for its reservation system as the Iran war lingers and uncertainty persists regarding the safety of the Strait of Hormuz . Panama Canal Administrator Ricaurte Vásquez Morales stressed during a market update that the waterway is “open and reliable,” while officials maintained there is no queue to pass through despite the traffic growth. In the first half of the waterway’s 2026 fiscal year from October through March, the canal recorded 6,288 transits, an increase of 224 transits from the year prior. Over the period, 254 million net tons moved through the waterway, a 4.5 percent increase from the volume tracked in the year-ago period. “The expectation is ​that this will ​continue until the situation in ‌the ⁠Middle East is resolved,” the Panama Canal Authority (ACP) finance chief Victor Vial ​said in a market update last week.…