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A ship carrying Ukrainian maize ran aground in the Suez Canal yesterday (Monday). It was quickly re-floated without disrupting traffic. Close to 10% of world trade passes through this man-made sea passage, which links the Red Sea with the Mediterranean, giving considerable time advantage to the ships carrying cargo
A ship carrying Ukrainian maize ran aground in the Suez Canal yesterday (Monday). It was quickly re-floated without disrupting traffic. Close to 10% of world trade passes through this man-made sea passage, which links the Red Sea with the Mediterranean, giving considerable time advantage to the ships carrying cargo. This incident happened not far from the city of Ismailia, in north-eastern Egypt.
In 2021, Egypt was shaken by the blockage of a ship, the Ever Given, for several days in the Suez Canal, a huge structure inaugurated in 1869 and then enlarged and modernised several times. The Suez canal authorities said that the ship The M/V Glory was refloated by the Suez Canal Authority, within hours of it getting aground. At that time, canal authorities said 51 ships were moving in both directions.
The Glory is a 225-meter-long, 32-meter-wide ship with a carrying capacity of 41,000 tonnes. It has come from Turkey en route to China as part of a fleet. The ship left Chornomorsk, a port city near Odesa in Ukraine, on 25 December with maize as part of the Black Sea Grain Initiative. The Initiative is an agreement between the UN, Ukraine, Russia, and Turkey that has been alleviating the global food crisis since July. The Marshall Islands-flagged vessel was rescued by four tugs. Authorities maintained that only minor delays had happened while the ship got aground and refloated.
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Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi had approved in May last year a project to widen and deepen the southern part of the canal where the Ever Given got stuck. The canal has been in news in the recent times regarding the proposal to establish the Suez Canal Authority Fund. People opposed to the bill maintain that it was a backdoor scheme to sell the stakes of the canal to foreign investors. Among other objectives, the Fund aims to enable the Suez Canal Authority to carry out all economic and investment activities, including the Fund’s contribution, alone or with others, to establishing companies, raising its capital, and investing in securities.
