Suez revenue nearly doubles in October as the largest vessels come back first
The Suez Canal Authority reported $724m in October, up 94% year on year, its strongest month since Red Sea transits collapsed. The arithmetic inside the figures matters more than the headline: tonnage grew twice as fast as traffic.
Suez Canal Authority chairman Lt. Gen. Osama Rabie gave the October figures on Thursday 5 November at a roundtable organised by the Egyptian Businessmen’s Association: 1,490 vessels transited against 1,128 in October 2025, a 32% rise; net tonnage rose from 47m to 88m tons, up 86%; revenue rose from $373m to $724m, up 94%. The numbers are identical across EgyptToday, Al-Shorouk, Al-Borsa, Amwal Al-Ghad, Attaqa, Cairo24 and Al-Monitor, and TASS a day later, and come from an official SCA statement rather than a leak. Rabie described “a remarkable improvement despite the geopolitical challenges in the region” and attributed it to “the return of most global shipping lines to transiting the canal again.” He also said the authority had entered new lines of business, including localised manufacture of marine units for export under a “Made in Egypt” banner.
The ratio inside the data is the finding. Average vessel size rose from 41,667 net tons to 59,060, up 42% by our arithmetic; revenue per transiting vessel went from $330,674 to $485,906. But revenue per net ton moved only from $7.94 to $8.23, up 3.7%. Price did almost nothing; size and volume did the work. One caution on the forward number: Egypt Telegraph reported Rabie raising the 2026 full-year revenue target to $6.6bn from $6.2bn, a figure that appears in no other outlet reviewed, and the same piece puts the vessel increase at 65%, contradicting the SCA’s own 1,128-to-1,490 comparison. October annualises to $8.7bn against that $6.2–6.6bn target. One month is not a run rate.
Assessment: Rabie told Al Arabiya Business in November 2025 that traffic and revenue would normalise by end-2026. By his own forecast he is roughly on schedule, which is why the SCA is briefing openly rather than through officials. Two things to hold back. First, part of the mid-2026 ramp was a windfall from someone else’s war: Africa Intelligence, via Rio Times, attributed the Q2 rise to tanker traffic rerouted by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz — that is analysis, not an SCA claim, and it cuts both ways when Hormuz reopens. Second, flat revenue per ton undercuts any suggestion that tariff policy engineered the recovery. Cairo is a price-taker here; the carriers decide.