Red Sea traffic holds a second week at levels unseen since the 2024 exodus began

Lloyd’s List Intelligence’s Red Sea Brief of 3 September recorded 290 ships transiting the Red Sea’s northern chokepoint in the week of 24–30 August 2026, against 294 the week before, a 1.4% weekly slip that leaves the level 36% below normal but 30% higher than 2025. The specialist tracker, which works from AIS data rather than authority statements, describes Suez traffic as elevated for a second consecutive week at levels not seen since the start of 2024 — that is, since shipping first abandoned the corridor. At the southern chokepoint it logged at least 302 Bab el Mandeb transits between 17 and 23 August, the highest since what the brief calls “the Saudi ban,” driven by bulk carriers, product tankers and containerships; traceable transits fell back the following week. Renewed Houthi threats, the brief states, have not derailed the recovery.

The dollar figures behind the count remain out of view. Suez revenue rose 23% in FY2025/26 according to Egyptian Streets, and Suez Canal Authority chairman Osama Rabie put receipts at $449m in early 2026, per Amwal Al Ghad and Daily News Egypt. The Authority has projected 30% revenue growth by 2027 — a forecast published by the State Information Service, a state body relaying a state body. No August monthly revenue figure has appeared. Against this, Egypt Today’s news index carried an item timestamped 3 September attributing to Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly a statement that the government is preparing strategic scenarios through 2030 including a worst-case scenario accounting for prolonged war and regional instability. That is an aggregated paraphrase from a state-aligned outlet, not a verified quotation.

Assessment: Two things are being measured here and only one of them is money. Transit counts recover faster than receipts, because the vessels that return first are the ones that were always most exposed to the Cape’s cost — and because tolls, discounts and vessel mix decide what a transit is actually worth to Cairo. Until the SCA publishes an August number, treat the 30%-above-2025 line as a traffic story, not a fiscal one. The unexplained “Saudi ban” benchmark in the best source on the desk is a reminder that even specialist trackers assume knowledge readers may not have. And a government publicly modelling war through 2030 is not obviously reading the same recovery its canal numbers describe.