Cairo - Mubasher: Egypt's Suez Canal reached $5.175 billion in revenues in 2015 compared to $5.465 billion in 2014, a 5.3% decrease, said Chairman of the Suez Canal Authority Mohab Mamish.
The slowdown in the water canal revenues is due to the decline of the SDRs or "Special Drawing Rights" through 2015.
Suez Canal depends on the main currency used in the collection of transit fees, which are internationally defined with an arithmetic unit called Special Drawing Rights and SDR.
Those currencies fell against the dollar through 2015 to reach $1.40 units versus $1.52 units during the previous year, down 7.9%.
SDR’s four major currencies are the euro, the Japanese yen, the Sterling pound, and the US dollar. Their values are calculated everyday by the World Bank.
The Suez Canal uses SDR as an international basket of currencies to avoid any impacts of fluctuation of international currencies on revenue.
The canal saw 17,483 ships pass through carrying 998.7 million tonnes of cargo in 2015.
The artificial waterway which connects the Mediterranean and Red Sea is one of the country's main sources of foreign currency reserves, along with tourism and remittances from Egyptian expatriates
