CAIRO: Suez Canal revenues recorded $462.1 million in August, up from $437.7 million in July, according to data from the Suez Canal Autority (SCA.)
The figure marks a 5.6 percent growth in the waterway’s revenues due to an 8.7 percent rise in the number of vessels crossing the canal.
The waterway is one of Egypt’s core sources of income, providing about 10 percent of the nation’s hard currency. In 2014, Suez Canal revenues registered $5.456 billion, marking 6.75 percent growth compared to $5.111 billion a year earlier
In August, President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi inaugurated the multi-billion dollar project of the “New Suez Canal” a year after its launch.
Egypt hopes the expansion project which provided a new 72-kilometer canal parallel to the current one to speed up transit time, would bolster the country’s limping economy and boost annual revenue up to $13.5 billion by 2023.