Chairman of the Ismailia-based Suez Canal Authority Ahmed Ali Fadel addresses a press conference at a club on the bank of the Suez Canal July 26, 2009.
"The total revenue of the 2008-2009 fiscal year fell to 4.74 billion dollars, down 7.2 percent compared with the previous year," Fadel said.
Meanwhile, the number of ships passing through the waterway fell to 19,354 in the 2008-2009 fiscal year, down from 21,080 in the 2007-2008 fiscal year. Some 811.4 million tons of goods passed the canal in the period, down 8.9 percent from 890 million tons the previous year.
According to the official, the traffic of the canal has been hit hard by the shrink of world trade since last autumn when the global financial crisis broke out. The pirate attacks in the Gulf of Aden, a key route to the canal, also scared away some cautious ship owners.
A cargo ship passes the Suez Canal in Egypt July 26, 2009.
Its revenue dipped to 302 million U.S. dollars in February, registering a five-year low.
"We are now facing some hardships," Fadel said, referring to the Somali piracy activities, which, according to him, has become less rampant.
"The piracy issue has been magnified," Fadel stressed.
To alleviate the impact, the authority fixed the Suez Canal toll and kept it unchanged in 2009. The authority is also deepening the canal from 62 feet to 66 feet so that 64 percent of the world's oil tanks and 99 percent of the cargo ships could pass the waterway by the end of this year.
The Suez Canal, linking the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, is one of the world's busiest waterways for international trade and Egypt's major source of revenue along with tourism, remittances from expatriate workers and energy exports.
In the fiscal year of 2007-2008, the canal's revenue recorded about 5.1 billion U.S. dollars, up 22.5 percent on a year-on-year basis.
A cargo ship passes the Suez Canal in Egypt July 26, 2009
A cargo ship passes the Suez Canal in Egypt July 26, 2009.
(Xinhua/Zhang Ning)
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