A cargo container ship crosses the new section of the Suez Canal after its opening ceremony in Ismailia, Egypt, yesterday. Egypt staged a show of international support as it inaugurated a major extension of the Suez Canal which President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi hopes will power an economic turnaround in the Arab world’s most populous country.
Reuters/Ismailia, Egypt
Egypt received a show of international support yesterday as it inaugurated a major extension of the Suez Canal which President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi hopes will power an economic turnaround in the Arab world’s most populous country.
The former armed forces chief, who led a military takeover two years ago but ran for president as a civilian last year, told a ceremony attended by French, Russian, Arab and African leaders that Egypt would defeat the terrorism that dogged the project.
“Work did not take place in normal circumstances, and these circumstances still exist and we are fighting them and we will defeat them,” Sisi said after signing an order allowing ships to cross the New Suez Canal.
“We promised a gift to the world and we accomplished it in record time - an additional artery for prosperity and for connecting civilisation to enhance the movement of international trade,” he said, as the first vessel, a container ship called CMA CGM TITAN, blew its horn and passed through the canal.
The $8bn project was completed in just one year instead of three on Sisi’s orders, but economists and shipping analysts question whether there is sufficient traffic and east-west trade to meet its ambitious revenue targets.
The canal expansion is the centrepiece of a grand agenda by Sisi to cement his tenure as the man who brought stability and prosperity to Egypt after he ousted elected Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Mursi in 2013 following mass protests.
The inauguration ceremony was also intended to bolster his international standing in the presence of French President Francois Hollande, Russian Prime Minister Dimitry Medvedev, King Abdullah of Jordan, the Emir of Kuwait and the King of Bahrain. Qatar was represented by HE Minister of Transport Jassim Seif Ahmed al-Sulaiti.
US Secretary of State John Kerry was in Cairo on Aug 2 for a strategic dialogue with Egypt, but no top-level representative of the Obama administration attended the ceremony. Ambassador Robert Beecroft and Darrell Issa, a Republican US Representative from California, attended.
Egypt’s allies are keen to burnish its image in a region beset by turmoil. Cairo too faces an increasingly brazen two-year-old insurgency based across the Suez Canal in the Sinai peninsula that has killed hundreds of police and soldiers.
In an ominous turn, Islamic State’s Egyptian affiliate released a video on Wednesday threatening to kill a Croatian hostage within 48 hours if Muslim women prisoners were not freed. Last month, the group managed to fire a rocket at an Egyptian navy vessel in the Mediterranean, near the coast of Israel and the Gaza Strip.
But Egyptian authorities say the safety of ships through the strategic canal has never been under threat.
Earlier Sisi, in full military regalia, sailed up the canal, flanked by a young boy in military fatigues waving the Egyptian flag, aboard the yacht El-Mahrousa, the first ship to pass through the Suez Canal when it was opened in November 1869.
Newly delivered French Rafale fighters and US F-16 warplanes staged a flypast, while helicopters flew overhead and naval vessels escorted the yacht in the televised ceremony.
Yesterday was declared a public holiday. Cairo and other cities were decked out in bunting, with fairy lights hung from the Nile river bridges and banners proclaiming “From the mother of the world (Egypt) to the whole world”.
Tents for the festivities in Ismailia were erected on the east bank of the canal. A giant statue of a toiling canal worker with shovel in hand looked over the waterway. Nationalist songs by military brass blared.
Egypt had been reeling from years of turmoil since the Arab Spring uprising that deposed autocrat Hosni Mubarak in 2011, and many of the country’s nearly 90mn population have suffered from a slower economy, a fall in tourism and high inflation.
For many Egyptians, as well as economists and experts, the immediate benefits of the expansion, funded largely by a public subscription in Egypt, are not obvious.
The Suez Canal Authority expects a windfall of additional revenue - $13.23bn in annual revenue by 2023 from just over $5bn in 2014, with the number of daily vessels rising from 49 to 97 over the same period.
Some economists have branded the projections ‘wishful thinking’ especially since Suez Canal revenue growth has failed to keep pace with growth in world trade since 2011.
But British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon praised the project as a “modern wonder”. Business Page 3
