News / Breaking the bottleneck: Egypt's president opens expanded Suez Canal this week

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“Egypt’s gift to the world!” posters proudly proclaim at the arrivals hall of Cairo International Airport.

While much of the international shipping community’s attention in the past few years has been on the Panama Canal expansion and plans for a rival canal through Nicaragua, Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi this week opens an expanded Suez Canal, just a year after announcing the project.

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