Panama Canal shipping traffic increased 2 percent for the quarter that ended in December in a sign that the global economic slump is easing, the waterway’s operator said.

Net shipment tonnage in the first fiscal quarter also rose, by 3.5 percent from a year earlier, the Panama Canal Authority said in an e-mailed statement.

The growth points to a world economy that’s “slowly but surely recovering,” Manuel Benitez, the authority’s vice president of operations, said in the statement. “We will go into the remainder of fiscal year 2010 with slightly positive projections and expect sluggish shipping segments to show some recovery.”

The canal, which connects the Pacific Ocean with the Caribbean Sea, is undergoing a $5.25-billion expansion to accommodate larger ships. (Bloomberg)