Egypt’s balance of payments will probably not see a significant disruption due to the Suez Canal blockage incident by Ever Given container ship, Ahram Online cited a Moody’s report on March 29th.
Suez Canal receipts accounted for 2% of Egypt’s gross domestic product (GDP) on average prior to the COVID-19 crisis. This provides a fair contribution to the total current account receipts.
Despite declining to 1.3% of GDP during the acute phase of the pandemic, Suez Canal receipts were more resilient than other cross-border services like travel receipts.
“A temporary disruption will not materially change our expectation of a return to pre-crisis canal receipts, as global trade recovers. […] we expect that other Suez Canal-reliant exporters, including oil-exporting countries in the Middle East, are unlikely to be affected in the absence of an extended disruption,” the news portal cited Moody’s.
However on the global trade level, the incident would temporarily affect the global container throughput volume by 10% to 15%.
“The timing of such a blockage could not have been worse”, said Moody’s.
Egypt succeeded on March 29th afternoon to fully refloat the stuck vessel after its course was corrected by 80% earlier that day.
The large 400-meter-long ship has been blocking Suez Canal for six days due to bad weather conditions on March 23rd. Egyptian authorities decided to temporarily suspend navigation through the Canal until the refloating works are complete.
The authorities allocated two more tugboats that have been recently built at Port Said shipyard to help in refloating Ever Given.
Towing and pushing the grounding vessel first included eight tugboats, largest of which was BARAKA 1 with a towing power of 160 tons.
