Suez transits reach a two-year high while the same war inflates Egypt’s import bill

Lloyd’s List Intelligence’s Red Sea Brief of 3 September 2026 reports Suez Canal traffic elevated for a second consecutive week, with weekly transits at levels not seen since the start of 2024 — that is, since vessels began abandoning the Red Sea. The recovery has been slow and is recent: Splash247, citing BIMCO on 8 January 2026, reported Suez traffic still 60% down 100 days after the last Houthi attack, on the Minervagracht on 29 September 2025. Suez Canal Authority chairman Ossama Rabie told Ahmed Mousa on Sada al-Balad on 28 June that revenues reached $4.67bn, or EGP 230.22bn, in FY2025/26, up 23% year on year. Between 1 January and 8 February 2026 the canal recorded 1,315 vessels, 56m net tons and $449m, against 1,243 ships, 47m tons and $368m a year earlier. Rabie has told an IMF mission the Authority projects roughly $8bn in FY2026/27 — a state forecast published by the State Information Service.

The second ledger runs the other way. Rio Times reported on 3 July that the IMF cut Egypt’s 2026 growth forecast to 4.2%, citing higher oil prices and regional tensions weighing on Egypt as an energy importer; Ecofin Agency had reported in April that the economy grew 5.3% in the first half of FY2025/26 even as the Fund trimmed its outlook. The war supplying that oil premium is not expected to close soon by the man prosecuting it: Just Security’s Early Edition of 10 September records Trump telling reporters on 9 September that he expected the Iran war to end after the November US midterm elections because Iran “can’t hold out any longer” — comments Just Security notes contradict warnings he received in a classified briefing. The same item carries a social-media claim by CBS reporter Jennifer Jacobs, explicitly flagged as hers alone, that American military aircraft were damaged in overnight strikes on the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan.

Assessment: Egypt is the pass-through economy for this war, and it is being paid and charged by the same event. Nobody has published the net calculation: canal receipts recovering in dollars against an import bill, a subsidy line and a tourism season all exposed to the oil price and to Bab el-Mandeb. Two cautions. The $8bn projection is an authority forecasting its own revenue through a government outlet, and should be treated as a target, not a baseline. And the transit recovery measures shipowner risk appetite, which is a sentiment variable — the same week’s strikes on Jordan are a reminder that it can be withdrawn faster than it returned.