Six months since the start of attacks by Yemen’s Houthis on maritime traffic, the strategic trade route that crosses the Red Sea, one of the most important globally, has lost more than half of its traffic, without any signs of returning to its usual flow.
Before the war, the waterway, bounded by the Bab el Mandab Strait to the south and the Suez Canal to the north, accounted for 15% of all global maritime trade and connected Asian and Persian Gulf ports to Europe.
Since the pro-Iran Houthi militia, based in Sanaa, hijacked the lead Galaxy ship and its crew in support of the Palestinian cause, in November, traffic in the Suez Canal has decreased by 51.2%, 50% if The entire previous year is accounted for, according to figures from the Port Watch tool of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the University of Oxford.
Despite the military intervention of the international coalition led by the United States and the United Kingdom against Houthi launches, they have not stopped missile attacks on ships that, according to the Houthi command, are aimed at those cargo ships that include Israel on their route. commercial.
This situation has forced shipping companies to divert their ships around the African continent passing through the Cape of Good Hope, which has seen its transit increase by approximately 50%.
“To safeguard our crew, vessels and their cargo, we will divert around the Cape of Good Hope for the foreseeable future,” the world’s largest shipping company, Maersk, said in a recent statement, adding that this situation increases “times and shipping costs.
The company estimated that during the second quarter of 2024, its operations on the route in Asia, the Mediterranean and Northern Europe will be reduced “between 15 and 20%”, and warned its customers of “an increase in their bills.” due to the increase of “40% in fuel consumption.”
For its part, the cargo container rental company Freightos assured that rates for that route skyrocketed after the first month of attacks, and that they have currently “stabilized at $6,500 per container.”
One of the actors most affected by the conflict in Gaza and the Red Sea is Egypt, whose economy depends largely on tourism and the Suez Canal, the country’s largest sources of foreign currency.
In April, an Egyptian official acknowledged that the channel’s revenue had fallen by 50% in the first quarter of 2024.
According to estimates by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the drop in income from tourism and the Suez Canal between 2023 and 2025 could reach approximately “3.7 billion dollars in the low intensity scenario, 9.9 billion of dollars in the medium intensity scenario and 13.7 billion dollars in the high intensity scenario”, a case that contemplates an escalation of the conflict.
In the fiscal year 2022-2023, the Suez Canal brought in 9,400 million dollars (about 8,608 million euros), 35% more than the previous year, in what was the third consecutive year in which historical records for income from this maritime passage.
Part of this result has been the increases in the passage rates that the canal operating company, owned by the Egyptian State, imposed in the context of the global inflation crisis and the problems unleashed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
