In 1728, Count Claudius Mercy ordered the digging of a canal to help drain the flooded lands around Timișoara. The Bega (Begheului) river was then canalised upstream from Timișoara, as far as Făget. Four years later, in 1732, the first ship travelled on the new canal to Pancevo.
On 3 May 1910, the hydroelectric power station in the Fabric district of Timișoara is put into operation. It uses the energy of the waters of the Bega Canal to produce electricity. It is one of the oldest hydropower plants in Romania. In 1912, a series of floods hit the Banat again. Also that year, 415,000 quintals of cargo are loaded at the Port of Timișoara, of which 310,000 quintals are wheat and flour, and about 200,000 quintals of cargo are unloaded. In 1917, 563 merchant vessels were registered on the Bega Canal, sailing 305 days a year. In 1937, the Otelec Harbour Office was established.
Between 1937 and 1938 the volume of goods transported reaches a maximum of 250,000 tonnes/year. Passenger transport on the Bega reached a peak of around 500,000 passengers in 1944. In 1945 the bridges in Timișoara and Otelec, destroyed by bombing during the Second World War, are removed from the canal bed. Traffic suffers severely because of the war, and in 1958 freight transport ceases. In 1967, passenger ships were also withdrawn. However, in the records of the Timișoara Port Captaincy from 1986, 20 ships are registered as operating on the Bega Canal.
The reopening of the canal is discussed again immediately after 1990, but the authorities do not have the necessary funds to dredge the canal and reopen navigation. In 2005, catastrophic floods occur throughout the Timiș - Bega river basin. At the end of 2008, dredging and greening of the Bega Canal began. The Bega Canal is now navigable again and has been rehabilitated under the cross-border project "Repair of the Bega Canal navigation infrastructure" and has a total length of 114.5 kilometres, connecting with the Tisa-Danube navigation system on Serbian territory and further on through the Danube-Main-Rhine canal to the North Sea. However, navigation on the Bega is possible as far as Sânmihaiu Român.