Suez transits up 27 percent in August as carriers edge back to the Red Sea

Suez Canal Authority chairman Osama Rabie announced August navigation data at a World Maritime Day ceremony in Alexandria on Sunday 20 September, declaring the waterway safe and traffic normal. The canal recorded 1,358 transits with net tonnage of 68.3 million tons, against 1,070 vessels and 45.2 million tons in August 2025 — increases of 27 percent and 51.1 percent, per Amwal Al Ghad and Daily News Egypt. Revenue was given as $567.1 million, described across allAfrica, Amwal Al Ghad, Daily News Egypt, Egyptian Streets and Food Business MEA as a 56.7 percent year-on-year rise from $326 million. Those two figures do not reconcile: $567.1 million against $326 million is a rise of 74 percent, and 56.7 percent implies a base near $362 million. The identical discrepancy across five outlets points to a transposed digit in the 2025 base. The Files runs the percentage and the absolute figure separately until the SCA primary statement resolves it.

The trend around the disputed number is corroborated by better sources. Bloomberg reported on 8 September, citing CAPMAS, that July revenue rose 42 percent year-on-year with 1,340 transits, 27 percent above July 2025 and up from 1,208 in June, as the Iran war’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz and Houthi threats in the southern Red Sea pushed ships back to the Egyptian route. Carrier behaviour points the same way: Sea-Intelligence estimates that 27 percent of Asia-Europe capacity is using the Red Sea route in September, with Gemini adding four new services, El Estrecho Digital reported on 22 September. The baseline Sisi set in March was bleaker — a $10 billion, or EGP 500 billion, decline in cumulative canal receipts since the start of the decade, which he said had placed Egypt at a “historic crossroads”, per AGBI.

Assessment: Two things are happening at once and Cairo has an interest in conflating them. Transits are genuinely recovering, and the most credible evidence for that is not Egyptian state data but Sea-Intelligence’s capacity estimate and Gemini’s service additions — commercial actors pricing their own risk. But 27 percent of Asia-Europe capacity is a partial return, and it was produced by a Hormuz disruption that could reverse faster than it arrived. The revenue arithmetic matters beyond pedantry: canal receipts are a headline input to the external accounts and to the same reserve position the Saudi deposit sits inside. A number that five outlets repeated without checking is a number worth checking.