Despite seeing an increase in traffic, Egypt’s Suez Canal saw a drop in revenues in 2015, registering $5.17 billion compared to $5.46 billion in the previous year.

The canal's registered revenues in 2015 were equivalent to 3.7 billion units of Special Drawing Rights (SDR is the foreign exchange reserve asset defined and maintained by the International Monetary Fund), the state’s Arabic news portal Al-Ahram reported on Wednesday, citing an official statement from the Waterway Authority.

Last year, the canal, which links the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, saw the passage of 17,483 ships compared to 17,148 in 2014, the statement added.

Along with Tourism and Foreign Direct Investments, the Suez Canal is one of Egypt’s largest foreign-currency sources. Net International Reserves stood at $16.4 billion by end of last month, down by almost 50 percent since the toppling of president Hosni Mubarak in 2011.   

Egypt inaugurated a 72km-long parallel canal to the Suez Canal last August to facilitate the passage of a larger number of ships, with an expected increase of total annual revenues to more than $13 billion by 2023.

(SDR 1 = US$ 1.382150 -- source: IMF)