The Hormuz crisis is refilling the Suez Canal just as an IMF deadline lands

Bloomberg, citing CAPMAS figures, reported on 8 September that Suez Canal revenue rose 42 percent year-on-year in July 2026, with 1,340 vessels transiting, a 27 percent increase on July 2025 and up from 1,208 in June. The week-level picture is consistent: the commercial tracker Linerlytica, reported by Sourcing Journal, expected 27 transits by major carriers in the week of 13–20 September, ten of them Maersk and eight CMA CGM, with five Cosco and OOCL services resuming canal routings. The same report noted that the returns are happening even as the Houthis expand their foothold near Bab el-Mandeb. Carriers, in other words, are being pushed north by the closure of one chokepoint faster than they are being deterred by the risk at another.

Some of the gain is mechanical rather than commercial. Lloyd’s List Intelligence’s Red Sea Brief of 3 September described Yanbu cargoes that previously moved through the Red Sea being routed north via Suez, with partial loading at Yanbu and topping up at Sidi Kerir, lengthening voyages, alongside a rise in Hormuz shuttle tankers and ship-to-ship transfers. That is traffic generated by a war, and it reverses as the war does. The baseline it is recovering from is deep: Sisi told an audience in March, as reported by AGBI, that canal receipts had fallen by about $10bn, or EGP 500bn, since the start of the decade, and described Egypt as at a “historic crossroads.”

The fiscal calendar does not wait for shipping. Egypt’s Extended Fund Facility, approved in December 2022 and since extended, runs to 15 December 2026. IMF staff and the authorities reached a staff-level agreement on the seventh EFF review and second RSF review on 29 June, which if approved by the Board would release about $1.64bn and bring cumulative disbursements to roughly $7.2bn. IMF Country Report No. 26/69 sets out a discrete obligation now falling due: a final status report from Egypt by end-September 2026 detailing progress on a corrective action plan, including any potential regulatory breaches identified. The same report’s Annex III argues that accelerating privatisation and divestment could yield dividends up to three times greater and longer-lasting, moving Egypt closer to frontier emerging-market peers.

Assessment: Treat the canal rebound and the programme deadline as one story about the same balance sheet. Transit fees are hard currency Cairo does not have to borrow; they are also, in their current form, a windfall priced by a conflict Egypt does not control, which is why the navigation language in Sunday’s presidency readout matters more than its diplomatic courtesies. Distrust two categories of number this week: forecasts issued by the Suez Canal Authority about its own future receipts, and any inference that improving external assets equal improving export earnings. They do not. The end-September report is the quieter test — a compliance document, not a disbursement, and the kind of item that slips without announcement.