With 85 per cent of the dredging work on the new Suez Canal completed, the waterway will be inaugurated on August 6, Canal Authority chief Mohab Mameesh told a news conference earlier this week. The excavation work is scheduled to finish by July 15. Electronic navigation systems have been installed and pilots are training on simulators equipped with maps of the new canal that will allow two-way traffic.
A consortium led by the UK advertising company WPP, including seven international marketing and communications companies, has been chosen to organise the inauguration ceremony. WPP helped organise the Egypt Economic Development Conference (EEDC) last March in Sharm El-Sheikh.
A WPP spokesperson told the local channel CBC that the ceremony will cost $30 million, and will be paid for by foreign and local private companies, without any contributions from the government. A promotional campaign will be launched at Egyptian embassies worldwide.
The canal authorities have given few details about the inauguration ceremony, except that President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi will be in attendance, along with world leaders and some 200 celebrities to observe traffic flowing simultaneously north and south through the canal. The government aims to more than double annual canal revenues to $13 billion in less than a decade. Revenues of the canal stood at $5.5 billion last year.
The government also plans to set up a logistics and industrial zone along the canal in the next five years. The area overlooking this vital waterway between Europe and Asia is expected to attract international interest and investment.
© Al Ahram Weekly 2015
