Suez transits reach levels last seen in early 2024, and the canal’s own forecast still needs a 71 percent jump
Lloyd’s List Intelligence reports a second consecutive week of elevated traffic through the Suez Canal. The Suez Canal Authority has announced the carriers' return three times since December.
The Lloyd’s List Intelligence Red Sea Brief of 3 September reports that Suez Canal traffic “remains elevated for a second consecutive week, with weekly transits at levels not seen since the start of 2024, when the mass exodus of vessels from the Red Sea was under way,” while also flagging Bab el-Mandeb disruptions and the long-awaited resumption of Red Sea transits. The brief is paywalled beyond its summary and no weekly transit count is public, so the claim is one specialist tracker’s characterisation rather than a verified series. The baseline it is measured against is severe: BIMCO chief shipping analyst Niels Rasmussen said on 8 January that in the first week of 2026 Suez transits were “still around 60% below the same week in 2023, before widespread diversions around the Cape of Good Hope began” — a shortfall that persisted after more than 100 days without a Houthi attack.
Revenue tells the same story with harder numbers. SCA Chairman Ossama Rabie put FY2025/26 receipts at $4.67bn, or EGP 230.22bn, a 23 percent annual increase — disclosed in a television interview with Ahmed Mousa rather than an authority release, as reported by Egyptian Streets on 30 June. Early-2026 transits generated $449m from 1,315 vessels carrying 56 million tons, against $368m a year earlier. The authority’s own forecast, published by the State Information Service in December 2025, is around $8bn for FY2026/27 and potentially $10bn by FY2027/28 — a required 71 percent jump inside twelve months. That projection assumes away the carrier problem: FreightWaves reported on 3 March that Rabie was addressing announcements by CMA CGM and Maersk suspending transits even as the SCA said vessel traffic continued apace.
Assessment: Count the announcements. Rabie declared “a new phase in the return of containerships” in December, defended traffic levels against carrier suspensions in March, and now has a tracker reporting an inflection in September. Twice the lines reversed; a third week of elevated transits, with a published count, is the threshold at which this becomes an event rather than a claim. Note also the downside Cairo is not pricing — Bertling’s July note warns that a rapid return raises port congestion, volatility and total logistics costs. The canal matters here mainly as a foreign-currency earner: it is the one large dollar inflow that is not borrowed, which is why the $8bn forecast is doing budgetary work.