The chairman of the Suez Canal Authority said the waterway's management was not to blame for the ultra-large container ship Ever Given running aground in the canal, blocking traffic for six days.
The 200,000-tonne, Panama-flagged vessel was successfully refloated on Monday, ending the blockage that disrupted global trade and impacted markets.
The vessel ran aground on March 23 at a narrow stretch of the waterway just north of the city of Suez.
After refloating it, the Ever Given was taken to the Great Bitter Lake halfway through the 193-kilometre canal to be inspected for damage.
“The Suez Canal is not to blame for the incident,” Adm Osama Rabie, the canal authority’s chairman, told a news conference late on Monday night.
“We are the affected party,” he added, saying the canal suffered $12-15 million in lost revenues each day of the blockage.
The authority has earlier said that strong wind during a sandstorm had blown the vessel off course.
On Saturday, Adm Rabie said he could not rule out human error or technical fault, but refused to draw conclusions, saying a thorough investigation will reveal the guilty parties.
In an apparent attempt to deflect possible blame from the two canal authority pilots who were onboard the Ever Given at the time it ran aground, he said the pair were among the most experienced pilots that were available.
“The accident showed the world the importance of the Suez Canal after some people spoke about alternative routes," he said.
"The Suez Canal remains the shortest and safest waterway and the one that offers the best services in the world.”
That sentiment was echoed by President Abdel Fatah El Sisi on Tuesday, when he met with Adm Rabie and canal employees to thank them for what he described as a “spectacular show of massive resources and capabilities.”
‘There is a silver lining in what happened. It alerted people to the large and important role played by the canal … This is an international facility for global commerce that has been enshrined in the consciousness of world trade for 150 or 160 years.” The canal was inaugurated in 1869.
By Monday afternoon, 422 vessels were stuck in the canal or anchored in open sea near the waterway’s Mediterranean and Red Sea entrances waiting to sail through. On Tuesday, Adm Rabie said traffic resumed at the canal at 6 PM on Monday, 15 minutes after the Ever Given arrived at the Great Bitter Lake.
Since then, he said, 113 vessels transited the canal and 140 more, more than double the normal daily traffic in the waterway, were expected to follow suit on Tuesday.
That figure, said Adm Rabie, testified to the popularity of the canal. He said the alternative route between Asia and Europe around South Africa's Cape of Good Hope was 10,000 miles longer, takes two more weeks to complete when compared with the use of the canal. "It is not safe either," he said.
Adm Rabie said the salvage operation was the first of its kind in the world; to refloat a vessel of Ever Given's size without offloading its cargo.
The 400-metre vessel has a cargo of nearly 20,000 containers.
Helped by the peak of high tide, a flotilla of tugboats managed to wrench the bulbous bow of the skyscraper-sized Ever Given from the canal's sandy bank, where it had been lodged since March 23.
The results of the inspection of the Ever Given at the Great Bitter Lake will determine whether the ship can resume its scheduled service. Once it is complete, a decision and arrangements will be made about the cargo on board.
The first vessels to sail through the waterway after the canal reopened for traffic at 6pm on Monday were YM Wish, Maersk Emeraldas and Ever Globe.
The planned number of vessels to sail through the canal per day has yet to be set by the Suez Canal Authority but maritime expert Ranjith Raja, head of Mena Oil and Shipping Research data company Refinitiv, said 90 to 100 ships a day was possible.
That would be roughly double the usual daily average of about 50.
Refinitiv estimated it could take more than 10 days to clear the backlog of ships.
Seventeen tugboats and support vessels were involved in the last big effort to move the ship on Monday afternoon.
Video shared online early on Monday purported to show the moments after the boat was refloated, with Suez Canal authority personnel heard rejoicing and shouting "Allahu Akbar" (God is Great).
The tugs included the Dutch-registered Alp Guard and the Italian-registered Carlo Magno, according to Leth Agencies. The two vessels arrived at the canal over the past 24 hours.
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Heavily-sugared soft drinks slip through the tax net
Some popular drinks with high levels of sugar and caffeine have slipped through the fizz drink tax loophole, as they are not carbonated or classed as an energy drink.
Arizona Iced Tea with lemon is one of those beverages, with one 240 millilitre serving offering up 23 grams of sugar - about six teaspoons.
A 680ml can of Arizona Iced Tea costs just Dh6.
Most sports drinks sold in supermarkets were found to contain, on average, five teaspoons of sugar in a 500ml bottle.
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
Sholto Byrnes on Myanmar politics
