Suez Canal revenue jumps 57 per cent in August as tonnage outpaces transits
The Suez Canal Authority reported $567.1m in August against $326m a year earlier. Net tonnage grew twice as fast as ship numbers — the returning traffic is larger than what left.
Osama Rabie, chairman of the Suez Canal Authority, released August traffic and revenue on 20 September at the World Maritime Day event in Alexandria, held under the theme “From Policy to Practice” and attended by Transport Minister Kamel al-Wazir, Alexandria governor Ayman Attia and Suez Canal Economic Zone head Mustafa Sheikhoun, per Amwal Al-Ghad. Revenue came in at USD 567.1m against USD 326m in August 2025, a rise of 56.7 per cent; transits rose 27 per cent to 1,358 vessels from 1,070; net tonnage rose 51.1 per cent to 68.3m tonnes from 45.2m. The gap between the transit and tonnage figures is the substance: traffic is not merely returning in number but in size, which is what moves revenue per crossing. For the full FY2025/26 the canal took USD 4.67bn, up 23 per cent, Rabie said on Sada Al-Balad on 28 June.
One claim in circulation should be handled at arm’s length. Al Mal, reporting Rabie’s 4 September phone interview with Lamis El-Hadidi on Al-Nahar, renders his USD 5.8–6.0bn figure as a forecast for calendar 2026 to end-December, against USD 4.1bn in the comparable period of 2025. Egypt Telegraph, covering the same interview, renders it instead as revenue already achieved in fiscal year 2026/27 and attributes the increase to a “Strait of Hormuz crisis.” FY2026/27 was two months old on 4 September, which makes that version arithmetically impossible as written; the Al Mal reading is the usable one, and the Hormuz causal claim is single-sourced and should not be repeated until a second outlet carries it.
Assessment: The canal’s recovery is being narrated in two incompatible ways, and the difference is not cosmetic. If August’s rebound is Red Sea normalisation, it is a return to a baseline Cairo does not control and cannot bank on. If Rabie is in fact publicly attributing the recovery to disruption at Hormuz — as one low-grade outlet has him doing — then the Authority is telling Egyptians that its revenue depends on someone else’s war, which is a harder sell and a different story. Against the SIS projection of roughly USD 8bn for FY2026/27, even the credible forecast leaves a wide gap. Note also which number the Authority chose to lead with: revenue, not tonnage per transit.