Egypt says over half of summit promises turned into projects

Others have suggested Suez Canal may not need an upgrade. Traveling from Singapore to New York through Suez reduces the distance by 19 percent compared with the route via the Pacific and the Panama Canal.

At its heart is APM Terminals’ Suez Canal Container Terminal (SCCT), which in its 10 years of operation has carved out a healthy business as one of the Mediterranean’s most important transhipment ports, but still has a relatively small share of Egypt’s import and export volumes, largely because of its location on the eastern side of the canal.

The naval passage was originally opened on November 17, 1869, after ten years of construction.

The new canal will, effectively, allow convoys to pass both north and southbound simultaneously.

For Vancouver entrepreneurs who want to do business in Egypt, however, the Suez Canal opening is great news.

The Social Fund for Development is to do vocational training courses on the activities that New Canal needs, Soliman promised, noting that SFD’s offices in all canal governorates have a list of available investment opportunities with their feasibility studies.

“By reducing the navigation time in the Suez Canal, your food, your medicine and your fuel will arrive faster”.

The project consists of 37 kilometres of new, parallel waterway and 35 kilometres of deepening and widening of the existing canal.

Hundreds of Egyptians, majority supporters of the deposed Muslim Brotherhood, have been killed and thousands imprisoned since El-Sisi, as army chief, pushed his Islamist predecessor from office in 2013 after mass protests. This is the first step in a broader plan to revolutionize the Egyptian trade economy.

It has constructed a new lane which runs alongside part of the existing canal, allowing reduced transit and waiting times for ships. Sisi hopes that the canal will become a source of national pride and that it will create jobs to combat the double-digit unemployment rate from which Egypt now suffers.

Officials say the entire funding for the project was raised in six days by selling investment certificates to domestic investors. The project’s total cost is more than $8 billion, but the government claims it will more than double the annual revenue generated by the canal, which is now around $3 billion.

Peter Hinchcliffe, secretary-general of the worldwide Chamber of Shipping, was present at the press conference and emphasised that canal traffic is linked to global trade, but said “you can not make a broad generalisation” when asked by The Independent on Sunday about any difference between projected trade figures and the figures from the government.