Suez revenue hits a post-2023 high on a closed Hormuz, not a calmer Red Sea

Suez Canal revenue rose 42 percent in July from a year earlier, to $505 million, the highest monthly level since December 2023, according to data from the state statistics agency CAPMAS reported by Bloomberg on 8 September and syndicated over the following two days to gCaptain, Transport Topics and Moneyweb. A total of 1,340 vessels transited the waterway in July, 27 percent more than in July 2025 and up from 1,208 in June; oil tankers accounted for 526 of them, against 485 the previous month. Bloomberg’s own causal language is hedged: the increase “likely at least partly reflects” the rerouting of Saudi oil exports via the Red Sea after the shuttering of the Strait of Hormuz, with a subsequent Houthi threat pushing many ships to exit north rather than cross the Bab el-Mandeb. Both traffic and income remain far below pre-Gaza levels — the canal earned a record $10.2 billion in 2023, when some 2,300 ships crossed in April alone.

Lt. Gen. Osama Rabie, chairman of the Suez Canal Authority, put his own numbers on the recovery in a phone interview with Lamis El-Hadidi’s programme on Al-Nahar TV, broadcast 4 September. He forecast revenue of $5.8 billion to $6 billion by end-December 2026 against $4.1 billion last year, said growth in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025–26 reached about 33.8 percent year-on-year with 7.23 percent for the full fiscal year, and said the share of Suez transits originating from the Strait of Hormuz had risen from roughly 8 percent to around 12 percent — a figure sourced only to the chairman, with no independent confirmation. He acknowledged that some lines still prefer the Cape of Good Hope despite the cost. Egypt Telegraph’s write-up of the same broadcast converted the projection into a result, reporting that the canal “achieved” $6 billion in fiscal 2026/27. On 10 September, Vetogate ran a television economist arguing from the opposite baseline that a 33 percent fall in revenue does not mean the canal has been lost.

Mohamed Abu Basha, head of macroeconomic analysis at EFG Hermes, told Bloomberg the resurgence “is expected to continue in the coming months, with both the rerouting of Asia-bound oil exports and a number of European shippers announcing the resumption of some of their Red Sea services.” That is the optimistic reading, and it rests on two different things happening at once: carriers deciding the southern Red Sea is survivable, and Hormuz staying shut. Only the first is a commercial judgement. Brent was approaching $98 a barrel as of 8 September, according to the Cairo Mubasher ticker — a level that raises Egypt’s own energy import bill at the same time as it raises tanker traffic through the canal. No outlet found by this desk has priced the second half of that trade.

Assessment: Read the July number as rent, not recovery. The tanker share that drove it exists because the Gulf’s main export artery is closed; if Hormuz reopens, the mechanism runs backwards, and nobody in the Egyptian coverage has said so aloud. Two things to distrust: the 8-to-12 percent Hormuz share, which is the chairman’s figure about his own performance and unverified elsewhere; and the speed with which a December forecast became a fiscal-year achievement in one outlet’s headline. The test is August and September CAPMAS data, not Rabie’s projection. And the same $98 barrel that fills the canal empties the current account.