Suez reports its strongest month since 2023, and no published figure to check it against
The Suez Canal Authority says October traffic and revenue were the highest since Red Sea disruption began in late 2023. The headline 94% increase arrived without an absolute dollar total or a stated comparison month.
The Suez Canal Authority issued a statement on Thursday 5 November reporting that traffic and revenue through the waterway reached their highest monthly levels in October since Houthi attacks began disrupting Red Sea shipping in late 2023. Al-Monitor headlined a 94 percent revenue increase. The authority’s chairman, Lieutenant General Osama Rabie, said the canal was witnessing “a remarkable improvement despite the geopolitical challenges in the region.” The monthly series around it is documented: revenue of $505 million in July, up 42 percent year-on-year and the highest total since December 2023, per CAPMAS figures; $567.1 million in August on 1,358 transits, up 27 percent year-on-year, per the SCA via Ahram Online. Full-year revenue for FY2025/26 came in at $4.6 billion, a 23 percent rise, again sourced to Rabie.
What the Thursday statement did not supply, in the material retrieved for this edition, is the October dollar figure, the vessel count, or the base month against which the 94 percent is measured. Against a depressed October 2025 the number carries little information; against the recovering months of mid-2026 it would be the strongest normalisation signal in three years. The State Information Service, a government outlet, carries Rabie’s projection of roughly $8 billion in revenue for FY2026/27 and $10 billion by FY2027/28. A separate and unresolved question sits underneath the recovery: the trade publication Container Management attributes part of the mid-2026 rebound to tonnage rerouting after what it describes as the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping. That is a single trade-press characterisation, not a confirmed cause.
Assessment: Two very different canals are compatible with the same percentage. One is a Red Sea returning to normal, in which the carriers that rerouted around the Cape come back and the revenue line holds. The other is a Hormuz diversion, in which tonnage arrives in the Egyptian waterway because another chokepoint is impaired — temporary money that reverses when the Gulf does. Cairo’s incentive is to present the first and bank the second, three weeks out from the end of an IMF programme. Until the Arabic SCA statement supplies an absolute figure and a base month, treat the 94 percent as a claim about a comparison, not a measurement of recovery.