Rabie guides the Suez Canal to $6.2bn against a baseline no published series supports
The Authority’s chairman told Egypt Forum 2026 the canal is targeting $6.2bn this year against $4.2bn last year. The central bank booked $4.4bn, the Authority’s own accounts say $4.67bn, and the IMF estimated $6.3bn.
Osama Rabie, chairman of the Suez Canal Authority, said at Egypt Forum 2026 that the Authority is targeting revenue of $6.2bn “this year” against $4.2bn “last year,” with second-quarter revenue up roughly 20 percent. The remarks were reported by the privately owned Egyptian outlet Masrawy on 22 October and carried again in its 23 October round-up. They sit awkwardly beside three other figures now in circulation. The Central Bank booked transit receipts of $4.4bn for FY2025/26, up 21.6 percent, in its 12 October balance-of-payments release. Rabie himself, via Ahram Online, has put the Authority’s own FY2025/26 figure at $4.67bn, up 23 percent. The IMF, in a path published through the State Information Service, estimated $6.3bn for FY2025/26 rising to $11.9bn by FY2029/30.
The fiscal transmission is firmer than the revenue series. Planning and Economic Development Minister Ahmed Rostom said on 5 October, in remarks reported by Arab News, that canal-linked tax receipts reached EGP 55.6bn in the first half of FY2025/26, up 31.3 percent year-on-year, with canal revenues up 18.5 percent over the same half and a further 24.5 percent rise in the final quarter of 2025. Rostom tied the recovery to the government’s headline target: “the momentum of our growth for the next fiscal year, that we expect to reach at least 5.4 percent.” That is above the 4.4 percent the IMF’s seventh review projected for FY2026/27 and above the 5.1 percent in its newer regional outlook.
Assessment: The gap is probably accounting rather than invention — fiscal year against calendar year, balance-of-payments transit receipts against the Authority’s gross books — but Rabie did not say which, and until the SCA publishes its monthly series the $4.2bn baseline cannot be set against the central bank’s $4.4bn. Two things follow. Do not plot these as one line. And note that the IMF’s $6.3bn estimate for FY2025/26 runs some 40 percent above what the central bank actually recorded, which makes the $11.9bn figure for FY2029/30 a function of assumed Red Sea risk pricing, not of traffic Egypt controls.