Sisi puts Suez losses at $20 billion on a day the published series is rising
The figure came with no base year, no methodology and no Suez Canal Authority document behind it. The Authority’s own published numbers point the other way.
In the same Strategic Command meeting, the State Information Service reports, Sisi said Egypt had lost around USD 20 billion in Suez Canal revenues in recent years because of regional instability, and that recent regional developments had pushed up oil and essential commodity prices, feeding through to prices in Egypt. Neither the SIS readout nor Egypt Today’s account attaches a base year, a comparison period or a Suez Canal Authority document to the figure. It is a presidential assertion of cumulative foregone revenue, not an audited number, and Egyptian officials have advanced variants of this claim repeatedly since 2024.
The published record runs in the opposite direction. Egyptian Streets reported on 30 June 2026 that Suez Canal revenue rose 23 percent year-on-year across the 2025/26 fiscal year “as regional tensions ease”. CairoScene put August 2026 revenue up 57 percent against August 2025. Daily News Egypt reported USD 449 million in early 2026 — the period definition is unclear in that report — under the headline that regional stability was returning. In December 2025 the Suez Canal Authority itself projected 30 percent revenue growth by 2027, a projection rather than an outturn. None of these is an SCA monthly series, and The Files has not obtained one; claims that Maersk, MSC and COSCO have resumed transits circulate mainly through freight-forwarder marketing blogs and should be sourced to carrier advisories or Lloyd’s List Intelligence before anyone repeats them.
Assessment: Both things can be true — a deep 2024–25 trough and a sharp 2026 recovery — and that is precisely why the $20 billion travels so well. It is a cumulative loss stated at the moment the flow is improving, which converts a closed chapter into a standing grievance and a justification for domestic austerity delivered to a room of governors and mayors. Hold it as a quote, not a statistic. The verification test is simple and the Authority can settle it in a sentence: name the base year. Until it does, the honest chart is SCA’s own monthly revenue with the claim annotated beside it, not inside it.