page_title: Suez Canal Area Development Project
section_title: New Suez Canal
hierarchical_section_title: Suez Canal Area Development Project / Projects / New Suez Canal
caption_attribution_description: English: Satellite view: The Suez Canal in August 2014 (left), The Suez Canal and the New Suez Canal in April 2016 (right).
context_page_description: The Suez Canal Corridor Area Project is a megaproject in Egypt that was launched on 5 August 2014 by president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. The project's aim is to increase the role of the Suez Canal region in international trading and to develop the three canal cities: Suez, Ismailia, and Port Said.
  The project involved building a new city, an industrial zone, fish farms, completing the technology valley, building seven new tunnels between Sinai and Ismailia and Port Said, improving five existing ports, and digging a new canal parallel to the Suez Canal. The new canal has increased the canal capacity by allowing ships to sail in both directions at the same time for a greater proportion of the canal. The project transformed the canal cities into an important trading center globally. It also built new centers on the Suez Canal for logistic and ship services.
  El-Sisi announced that the New Suez Canal project will operate after a year. The project's authority said that the revenues of the canal will increase from 5 billion dollars to 12.5 billion dollars annually. The new canal channel and the seven tunnels were under construction simultaneously.
context_section_description: The New Suez Canal (Egyptian Arabic: قناة السويس الجديدة‎ Kanāt El Sewēs El Gedīda) is the name of an artificial waterway project in Egypt which created a second shipping lane along part of the Suez Canal. Also, other parts of the Suez Canal were deepened and widened. The project was inaugurated by the Chairman of the Suez Canal Authority Mohab Mamish in the presence of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi on 5 August 2014. The new canal was opened one year later in a ceremony attended by several international dignitaries including the then French President François Hollande.
  The New Suez Canal is expected to expand trade along the fastest shipping route between Europe and Asia. The new canal allows ships to sail to both directions at the same time. This decreases transit time from 18 to 11 hours for most ships. The expansion is expected to double the capacity of the Suez Canal from 49 to 97 ships a day.
  The New Suez Canal is 72 km (45 mi) long, including 35 km (22 mi) of dry digging, and 37 km (23 mi) of "expansion and deep digging" to provide a second shipping lane in the existing 164-kilometre-long (102 mi) canal, allowing for separated passing of ships in opposite directions. It also includes the deepening and expansion of a 37-kilometre-long (23 mi) section of the existing canal. The construction, which was scheduled to take three years, was instead ordered by the President to be completed in a year. The chairman of the Suez Canal Authority announced that the revenues from the Suez Canal (after the completion of the New Suez Canal) will jump from 5 billion dollars to 12.5 billion dollars annually. The Egyptian government said that these revenues will be used to transform the cities along the Canal (Ismaïlia, Suez, and Port Said) into international trading centers. The government has also said that many new projects in the Suez province are being studied as a result of enlarging the Suez Canal capacity, such as building a new industrial zone, fish farms, and the completion of the valley of technology (wadi al thechnologia).
  The project cost around 30 billion Egyptian pounds (approximately 4.2 billion dollars) and no foreign investors were allowed to invest in the project, but rather Egyptians were urged to participate in funding the project through bank certificates of deposit initially yielding 12%, later raised to 15.5%. After President Sisi announced the new megaproject, Egypt's stocks rose to the highest level in the past six years. The Egyptian Armed Forces participated in the project by helping in digging and designing the canal.
  The enlarged capacity allows ships to sail in both directions at the same time over much of the canal's length. Beforehand, much of the canal was only one shipping lane wide, with limited wider basins for passing. This is expected to decrease waiting time from 11 hours to 3 hours for most ships, and to increase the capacity of the Suez Canal from 49 to 97 ships a day.
caption: Old and New Suez Canal
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