Suez Canal revenues lowest in 10 months
By Nehal ElSherif
Egypt's Suez Canal revenue fell in November to US$408.4 million, the lowest since February, according to data on the Suez Canal Authority’s website.
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| Original graph for monthly revenue in 2015 on Tableau here |
The decline is due to fewer vessels crossing the fastest shipping route between Europe and Asia. There were 1,401 vessels crossing in November compared to 1,500 and 1,515 in October and September respectively.
These figures add doubt to hopes raised by the newly opened expansion of thewaterway, which aimed at
increasing revenues through cutting down the time needed for each vessel to
cross.
The shipping route is one of Egypt’s main sources of foreign currency.
However,
journalist Niveen Wahish said that the decline in traffic can not be evaluated
on a month by month basis, the true indicator of whether traffic has dropped or
not is to look at the annual figure.
Compared
to November 2014, revenues and traffic declined this year.
"As
for whether the expansion will help the economy as much as people expected,
that is very much dependent on growth in global trade; if it picks up then
Egypt will benefit," said Wahish, who is an economic editor at Egypt's
largest newspaper Al-Ahram.
The UK-based market research Euromonitor International said that the Suez Canal expansion could boost growth once global trade flows pick up.
The
government said the expansion would boost annual revenues from the canal from
US$5.3 billion in 2014 to $13.2 billion in 2023.
The Suez Canal saw a sharp increase in its revenues between 2003 and 2008. The financial crisis and the slowing global economy led to a sharp drop in revenues from $5.3 billion in 2008 to $4.3 billion in 2009.
This
graph shows both the annual revenues and number of vessels in the Suez Canal
between 2000 and 2014.
