Despite the Ever Given blocking the Suez Canal in March 2021, the canal achieved the highest annual revenue in its history, amounting to 6.3 billion dollars, while also experiencing a 10% increase in traffic.
During March 2021, one the world’s largest ships, the Ever Given stuck in the Suez Canal, blocking the traffic for about a week, making world’s headlights and causing supply chain issues.
This incident in addition to problems caused daily by the COVID-19 pandemic could have affected the Suez Canal. However, this did not happen, as the head of the authority explained that during 2021, 20,694 ships crossed the canal from both directions compared to the transit of 18,830 ships during the year 2020, an increase of 10%.
What is more, the total net tonnages amounted to1.27 billion tons compared to 1.17 billion tons during the year 2020, a difference of 100 million tons. An increase of 8.5%.
Additionally, the Suez Canal’s revenues during 2021 achieved a significant increase of 12.8% of its revenues in dollars, as the revenues of the Canal recorded 6.3 billion dollars, compared to 5.6 billion dollars during the year 2020, an increase of 720 million dollars.
Commenting on the efforts made by the authority in dealing with the challenges it faced during the year 2021, the president of the authority stressed that:
The Suez Canal had spared no effort to serve the global navigation community despite the challenges related to the emerging corona virus crisis, as it took the lead in solidarity with the calls and initiatives of the International Maritime Organization (IMO). To help solve the problem of replacing stranded crews due to the pandemic, by granting passenger ships carrying marine crews a 15% reduction to support the initiative
The head of the authority also stressed that the indicators related to the volume of trade transiting the Suez Canal surpassed the rates of increase in the growth rates of global trade.
More specifically, the rate of increase in the volume of global trade passing through the canal was about 8.5%, and the volume of container trade passing through the canal increased by 7.2% during the year 202. At the same time, the rate of increase in the volume of container trade globally reached 6% during the same period.
Nonetheless, in order to protect Suez Canal from “unforeseen fluctuations and unprecedented crises”, the authority revealed its plans to introduce a sovereign wealth fund.
More specifically, the authority channels the revenue derived from the canal with transit charges to the Egyptian Ministry of Finance at each month-end. Now, Suez Canal wants to set apart the revenues to build the sovereign wealth fund.
The new plan will likely to be up for debate at the House of Deputies when the Cabinet shares its approval.
There was also a significant increase in the transit rates of various types of ships compared to 2020, as the number of LNG carriers increased by 36.6% from 686 ships in 2020 to 937 ships in 2021, and container ships transiting the canal increased by 10.1%, bringing the total number to 5186 container ships compared to 4710 ships during the year 2020.
As for bulkers, they increased 15.3%, by 5893 ships, compared to the transit of 5113 ships during the year 2020.
The Suez Canal also acquired about 15.7% of the total global seaborne grain trade with a total quantity of 83.5 million tons of goods.
The Suez Canal Authority further explained that these indicators “come in parallel with achieving promising results in terms of the results of the various axes of the canal’s ambitious development strategy 2023, which is led by the development of the navigation course.”
Now, the Suez Canal intends to adopt new work mechanisms and controls during the new year that support the preservation of the environment and are in line with the directions of the IMO to reduce carbon emissions by adopting some new measures, including studying providing incentives for environmentally friendly ships, and discussing ways to use renewable energy.
