Suez earnings and central bank reserves both climb as an IMF deadline falls due this month

Suez Canal revenue reached $505 million in July 2026, up 42 percent year-on-year on 1,340 transits, according to Transport Topics, which attributes the rise to Hormuz disruption from the Iran war and Houthi-driven rerouting lifting tanker volumes; the Arabic outlet Egyin reported the same 42 percent figure on 8 September and called it the highest monthly level since December 2023. Over the first seven months of the calendar year, revenue came to $2.88 billion against $2.4 billion in the same period of 2025, a 29 percent rise, on CAPMAS data reported by Kuwait’s Al-Rai on 7 September. The Suez Canal Authority’s own guidance for calendar 2026 is $5.8 billion to $6.0 billion. That sits awkwardly beside the projection the SCA chairman, Lt. Gen. Ossama Rabie, gave an IMF mission in December 2025 and which the State Information Service published: roughly $8 billion for FY2026/27, rising towards $10 billion the year after.

The Central Bank of Egypt put net international reserves at $57,214.5 million at end-August 2026, provisional, published on 7 September — the first reading above $57 billion, against $53,009.2 million at end-April on the bank’s own release. Egypt’s NIR presentation does not net out Gulf deposits or FX swaps. The Fund, completing the fifth and sixth EFF reviews and the first RSF review on 25 and 26 February and unlocking about $2.3 billion, credited external issuance, FDI and record non-resident inflows into domestic debt — the most reversible component of the build. IMF Country Report 26/69 records a commitment that Egypt “deliver a final status report by end-September 2026 detailing progress on the status of the corrective action plan, including addressing any potential regulatory breaches identified.” This desk has not established which institution that plan covers.

Assessment: Two different clocks. The canal is earning on other people’s wars: the same Red Sea and Hormuz disruption that lifts tanker traffic can unwind faster than the SCA’s five-year capital plans assume, which is why the $8 billion briefed to an IMF mission in December cannot be reconciled with the $5.8–6.0 billion the Authority itself guides to now. One of those numbers is aspirational and the gap is the tell. On reserves, distrust the headline concept before the arithmetic: a record NIR print that does not net Gulf deposits is a claim about liquidity, not solvency. The testable item is the dated end-September commitment — thirteen days out and unremarked in Cairo.