The Egyptian Chamber of Commerce’s International Transportation and Logistics Division has downplayed the impact of tensions in the Red Sea on shipping traffic through the Suez Canal.
Amr El-Samdouni, secretary-general of the division, said on Tuesday that “the tensions that have occurred in the Red Sea region by the Houthi group have not had a significant impact on shipping in the Suez Canal.”
In a press statement, El-Samdouni added that “maritime and international transportation operations are running smoothly, especially after the return of the global shipping company Maersk to using the Red Sea route to transport containers.”
A schedule of shipping voyages for the Danish company Maersk issued late Monday evening showed that the company has kept plans to pass more than 30 container ships through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea in the coming period, despite an attack on one of its ships in the region earlier this week. However, Maersk also suspended plans for some ships to pass through the Red Sea route amid the continued threat of attacks by Houthi militants in Yemen, saying it will announce the itinerary for each ship later.
Maersk suspended all its voyages through the Red Sea for 48 hours on Sunday after Houthi rebels allied with Iran attempted to board the Maersk Hangchou, although US military helicopters eventually repelled the attack and killed ten militants.
The Red Sea is the only route to the Suez Canal, connecting some of the world’s largest consumers of tradable goods in Europe with major suppliers in Asia.
The Suez Canal accounts for about 12% of global trade, representing 30% of total global container traffic, and more than $1 trillion of goods annually. About 80 million tons of grain pass through the Red Sea annually via the Suez Canal.
Changing the course of ships to the Cape of Good Hope around the southern tip of Africa is expected to add a fuel cost of up to $1 million for each round trip between Asia and northern Europe.
The Houthi group, which controls parts of Yemen after years of war, began attacking ships passing through the Red Sea in November, saying it was in retaliation for the Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip, which is controlled by the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas).
Major shipping companies, including container giants Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd, stopped passing through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal last month and instead diverted their ships to the longer Cape of Good Hope route around Africa. However, Maersk said on December 24 that it was preparing to return to the Red Sea, citing the deployment of a US-led military operation to protect ships.
El-Samdouni explained that Maersk’s suspension of passage through the Suez Canal “only lasted a few days and in this period no containers entered Egypt, so the goods that Egypt imports were not affected by the implications of the crisis.” He stressed that “so far, the Suez Canal has not been significantly affected by the change in the course of international shipping movement, following the security threats in the Red Sea… Things are good, and there has been no major impact, and the number of ships that have changed course is small.”
He called on importers in Egypt to “not raise the prices of imported goods and exploit the crisis by some.”
The secretary-general of the International Transportation and Logistics Division of the Cairo Chamber of Commerce explained that the number of ships that have actually diverted their course to pass through the Cape of Good Hope during the period has reached about 76 ships, pointing out that it is a small percentage compared to the passage of 2,128 ships through the Suez Canal during the same period.
He stressed that “what is happening in the Red Sea will not cause any damage to the Egyptian state, as the amount of goods that are transported from East Asia through the Suez Canal will accumulate at the ports and pass through the Suez Canal and there will be no impact on the maritime passage in Egypt.”