Days after the Ever Green ship blocking the Suez Canal moved, making way for other ships to move, the Egyptian Suez Canal Authority on Saturday said that the shipping traffic has been cleared 

The movement of ships on the Suez Canal, which is a conduit for over 10% of world trade, started on Monday after the 200,000-tonne MV Ever Given was refloated. The ship was stuck for nearly a week, blocking the traffic movement. 

SCA chief Osama Rabie, in the statement said, “All the ships waiting in the waterway since the grounding of the… (MV) Ever Given have completed passage.”

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Rabie acknowledged that the blockage left Egypt’s international shipping and wider reputation on the line. The ship got stuck in the canal after a sandstorm.

“Ninety-nine percent” of personnel who worked to refloat the giant vessel were Egyptian, Rabie said.

Due to the blockage, an estimated trade worth $9.6 billion each day was held between Asia and Europe. When the waterway was closed, Egypt lost $12-$15 million in revenues for each day, the canal authority said. In 2020, nealry 19,000 travelled through the canal. 

The Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi has ruled out further widening of the southern stretch of the canal, where the boat was diagonally stuck. 

The Suez Canal earned Egypt just over $5.7 billion in 2019/20, little changed from the year before, and similar to the $5.3 billion in revenues earned back in 2014.

“Economically… (further expansion) would not be useful,” Sisi declared this week.

The costly blockage is likely to result in litigation, according to analysts, with the ship’s Japanese owners, Taiwanese operators and Egypt itself all under the microscope.