Suez Canal Revenue Jumps 42 Percent to 505 Million Dollars in July as Hormuz Reroutes Ships
Suez Canal revenue rose 42 percent from a year earlier to 505 million dollars in July, its highest monthly take since December 2023, after the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz and Houthi threats in the southern Red Sea pushed more vessels back onto the Egyptian waterway, per Bloomberg. The month’s 1,340 transits, per data from the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics, were 27 percent above July 2025 and up from 1,208 in June, extending a partial recovery that began earlier in the year.
Tankers led the rebound
Oil tankers accounted for 526 of July’s transits, up from 485 the month before, and made up about 39 percent of all traffic through the canal, on our calculation. The increase likely reflects, in part, the rerouting of Saudi crude exports through the Red Sea because of the Hormuz closure, after a separate threat from Yemen’s Houthi rebels pushed many ships to head north rather than cross the Bab el Mandeb, another vital chokepoint. Month on month the canal added 132 transits, a gain of 11 percent, on our calculation, with tankers contributing 41 of them.
Still far below the pre crisis peak
July’s revenue was the strongest month for the canal since December 2023, before traffic collapsed in early 2024 when Houthi attacks on international shipping in the southern Red Sea began. The waterway, the shortest sea route between Europe and Asia, is alongside tourism and remittances one of Egypt’s main sources of foreign currency. The Suez Canal Authority expects full year revenue to rise to between 5.8 billion and 6 billion dollars, from 4.1 billion in 2025, chairman Osama Rabiee said on a local television programme last week, a gain of about 41 to 46 percent, on our calculation, closely tracking July’s monthly jump. Annualized, July’s 505 million dollar take runs at about 6.06 billion dollars, on our calculation, at the top of that range. Both still sit well below the record 10.2 billion dollars the canal earned in 2023, when about 2,300 ships transited in April alone; July’s 1,340 transits are roughly 58 percent of that peak month, on our calculation.
Why it matters: The canal is recovering revenue lost to the Red Sea crisis by capturing traffic displaced from a second chokepoint, on our reading: the Hormuz closure has sent Gulf crude the long way round, and Suez is the beneficiary. The recovery is real, with July the best month in more than 2 years and the full year projection implying a rebound of more than 40 percent, but the canal is still short of its 2023 record, earning on an annualized basis about 59 percent of that year’s revenue, on our calculation, so the story is repair rather than full restoration. For Egypt, where the canal is a core dollar earner, the swing is a direct support to external receipts, consistent with the fiscal year rebound in canal tonnage in our published coverage.
Outlook: The recovery is expected to continue in the coming months as more Asia bound oil reroutes and some European shipping lines resume Red Sea services, per Mohamed Abu Basha, head of macroeconomic analysis at EFG Hermes, cited by Bloomberg. The composition of that recovery matters, on our reading: a fall in Red Sea risk would draw container traffic back to the canal, while a normalization at Hormuz could unwind some of the tanker rerouting that is supporting Suez volumes now.
Sources: Bloomberg, Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics, Suez Canal Authority, The Edge.
