Suez Canal revenues fall by 4% in nine months: CBE

Receivables from fees paid by ships passing through the Suez Canal have fallen by 4.2 percent in the first nine months of the financial year 2016/2017, according to an official statement by the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE).

Receivables amounted to $3.7 billion between July 2016 and March 2017, down from $3.9 billion in the year-ago period.

The CBE attributed the decline to lower net tonnage of transiting vessels by 1.7 percent, added to a drop in the value of a single special drawing rights (SDR) unit against the U.S. dollar by 1.6 percent.

Egypt logged an overall surplus in its balance of payments of $11 billion in the first nine months of the financial year 2016/2017 against a deficit of $3.66 billion in the same period of the financial year 2015/2016.

The Suez Canal Authority is targeting revenues of 66.1 billion Egyptian pounds ($3.6 billion) in the general budget for the next financial year.

The CBE said that the most populous Arab country had achieved a surplus of $11 billion in its balance of payments for the first nine months of this financial year, against a deficit of about $3.6 billion during the same period a year earlier.

Source: Mubasher