Record revenues flow from Suez despite megaship blockage

CAIRO: The Suez Canal netted Egypt a record $5.84 billion in the last tax year, its chief said Sunday, despite the coronavirus pandemic's impact on world trade plus a six-day blockage by a giant cargo ship.

"Despite various challenges, revenues from the canal rose sharply" in the fiscal year ending June 30, said Osama Rabie, head of the Suez Canal Authority chief (SCA).

Authorities netted "the highest revenues in the history of the canal, hitting $5.84 billion", over two percent up from the previous year, he said in a statement. Rabie said the SCA's "marketing and flexible pricing policies (had) helped maintain a good rate of traffic through the canal and earned the trust of our partners."

But the period was far from plain sailing.

The statement came just four days after the huge container ship MV Ever Given, which had blocked the vital waterway for six days in March, finally steamed away after its Japanese owners reached a compensation deal with Cairo.

The nearly 200,000-tonne vessel had run aground and become wedged across the canal during a sandstorm on March 23, blocking a vital artery from Asia to Europe that carries 10 percent of global maritime trade and provides Egypt with vital revenues. It was only refloated six days later, after a huge salvage operation that saw one SCA employee killed. Egypt, which takes a toll from ships traversing the canal, said the crisis cost it as much as $15 million per day, while maritime insurers estimated the cost to world trade to be in the billions.