Egypt’s Suez Canal Authority (SCA) plans to offer new financial incentives for ships that follow environmentally friendly standards.
According to the Egyptian daily paper El Watan, citing a TV interview with SCA Chairman Osama Rabieh, ships that follow environmentally friendly standards will be benefitted by financial incentives, offered by the Suez Canal Authority.
This development comes after another green initiative by Suez Canal, which in December announced that it will reduce rebates on canal tolls for LNG carriers from January 1 till June 30 2022.
What is more, 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.
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 to 1.27 billion tons compared to 1.17 billion tons during the year 2020, a difference of 100 million tons. An increase of 8.5%.
Furthermore, 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.
