I think this is the hidden story here. Egypt doesn't have a particularly strong economy, its stock market (unlike the US) is 40% below 2018, it's currency fell more than 50% vs USD in 2016 and has only recovered a few percent, and it (like the US) appears to have significantly more debt than ever before. And the entire globe is still somewhat covid-depressed economically.

When governments, banks and major companies are highly leveraged, all it takes is temporary system shocks to collapse the whole thing. It's not just the lost canal revenue, it's tons of companies in the region that can't get their goods to international markets which slows capital flows, tax revenue, import/export tariffs, etc. Will be interesting to see the effects.

https://tradingeconomics.com/egypt/currency https://tradingeconomics.com/egypt/external-debt

That's more than 5% of the total government revenue. It can definitively lead to instability in the currency because the government might be forced to print the deficit if it cannot secure funding through other means. The inflation rate is well above 2% which means that the government should cut spending and only put money into investments that net a return (cleaning up the canal nets a return).

Wow, costs $300K to transit through the canal per ship by fee alone? That is capital intensive.

It's amazing that more ships are not simply sailing around Africa.

The $300K cost is actually calculated to be just below the amount it would cost extra to sail around the cape, adjusting for other factors, of course.

There's actually a robust and competitive market for intercontinental shipping canals:

https://www.industryweek.com/ideaxchange/article/21965825/su...

The ship can hold 20,000 containers so the fee is only $15 each. By comparison, it costs $16 to take the Lincoln Tunnel into Manhattan.

Their daily operating costs are a significant fraction of the $300,000 and it saves a couple weeks.

(tens of thousands of dollars just for fuel each day)

I'd imagine it is riskier sailing all the way around Africa than through the Suez, right?

It's risky for small boats due to the huge waves down there. Huge cargo ships seem to manage ok.

They do sometimes depending on oil prices and how much of a hurry they are in https://www.imarest.org/themarineprofessional/on-the-radar/i...

Given that so many ships that are run by people who can afford $300k per trip, which could pay the annual salary for a team of analysts, it's amazing you're making this comment.

Not really. Think of costs of fuel, costs of crew, I created insurance, slower delivery times.