Suez revenue is up 57 percent on the year and still running at little more than half of 2023

Suez Canal Authority chairman Admiral Osama Rabie released August traffic and revenue data at the World Maritime Day 2026 event in Alexandria, organised by the Transport Ministry’s Maritime Transport Sector, and declared the waterway safe and navigation stable. Revenue reached $567.1m against $326m in August 2025, a rise of 56.7 percent. Transits rose to 1,358 vessels from 1,070, up 27 percent. Net tonnage reached 68.3m tons against 45.2m, up 51.1 percent. Canal revenue for fiscal 2025/26 came in at $4.67bn, up 23 percent. The figures were carried by Daily News Egypt, Amwal Al Ghad, CairoScene, allAfrica and others. They are SCA self-reported and are not independently audited; this desk has no third-party transit count for August to check them against, and obtaining one is the single most useful next step on this file.

The number that qualifies the headline is in the same release. Transits averaged about 40.8 vessels a day from January to August 2026, against 73.7 a day in 2023 — roughly 55 percent of the pre-disruption run rate, per allAfrica’s 22 September account. The 56.7 percent year-on-year gain is measured against a floor rather than a recovery to trend. On carrier behaviour, MSC has partially restored Suez transits on East–West services. Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty has previously put Egypt’s cumulative forgone canal income from Red Sea tensions at roughly $11bn, a figure carried without a date or venue and not usable until both are pinned. The Authority is meanwhile selling its expertise abroad: involvement in reopening Libya’s Port of Sirte after fourteen years closed, simulator modelling of Saudi Arabia’s Ras Al-Khair, and talks on two Namibian ports.

The canal file sits directly on the external accounts. The dollar traded at EGP 51.64 buy and 51.74 sell at the National Bank of Egypt on Sunday 27 September. A comparison print of about 50.95 roughly three weeks earlier comes from Rio Times, an aggregator, and is too weak a basis on its own for a depreciation trend; the Central Bank’s own daily series is the only thing that settles it. The IMF completed the seventh review under the Extended Fund Facility and the second under the Resilience and Sustainability Facility on 30 July, and published a feature on 21 September titled “Resilience Under Pressure: Egypt’s Economy Defied Expectations.” The Fund’s own March country report, covering the fifth and sixth reviews, contained requests for rephasing of access, an extension of the arrangements and a waiver of nonobservance of a performance criterion.

Assessment: Read the two numbers together and the SCA’s confidence looks like a base effect dressed as a turn. A 57 percent gain over a collapsed August tells you about last year; 40.8 daily transits tells you about this one. Watch whether MSC’s partial return broadens into September or stalls — one carrier resuming East–West strings is not a market decision, and Rabie’s “canal is safe” framing is a commercial pitch to underwriters as much as a security assessment. The diversification into Libyan, Saudi and Namibian port work is the honest part of the announcement: an authority hedging against its own chokepoint. Against that, the distance between the Fund’s “resilience” messaging and its own waiver-and-rephasing language six months earlier is the gap worth holding open.