SUEZ CANAL DUES

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 113, 6 February 1937, Page 24

SUEZ CANAL DUES

Second Reduction in Year The board of directors of the Suez Canal Company recently decided to reduce the canal dues as from April next by 1/- a ton. The dues, which last July were already reduced from 7/6 to 7/per ton net will thus be brought down to 6/-. For ships in ballast the dues are to he reduced as from April 1 from 3/6 a ton to 3/-. Passengers dues are to be fixed at 6/- a head instead of 12/4. The reductions were the second for 1936. In July the dues for loaded vessels were reduced from 7/6 to 7/- and those for ships in ballast from 3/9 to 3/6. The total traffic passing through the Suez Canal in 1936 was 32,811,000 tons net register At the annual general meeting of the company, it was pointed out that this total was- due to some extent to the Italo-Abyssinia conflict. The real commercial total, it was stated in the report, was just under 28,500,000 tons, one of the smallest totals since 1925. To some of the shipping companies regularly engaged in the Eastern and Australian trade the latest reductions will represent a large annual saving. To instance, for example, the P. and O. Co. and associated companies, whose vessels made 386 transits of the canal in 1935, the annual saving on the basis of the net tonnage involved, that is 2,978,000 tons, would be nearly £150,000, apart from the saving on passengers.

This estimate is based on the assumption that all the transits would be ou loaded vessels, though it is probable that a few would be in ballast. The heavy financial burden imposed by Suez Canal dues on ships engaged in the Eastern trade was emphasised by Mr. Irvine Geddes, the chairman of the Orient Line, at the launch of the new liner Orcades at Barrow.

He pointed out that while all operating expenses had risen, the Suez Canal dues, being based on gold, had increased out of all proportion to other items, the burden on transit through the canal now being 50 per cent, higher than before the war in relation to other charges. One of the largest single items in the running costs of the Orcades would, he added, be for the Suez Canal dues, amounting to about £14,000 each round voyage. Thus if the ship spent her life in the Australian trade aud the dues remained at the same level, the ship during her life would pay more in dues to the Suez Canal Company than her owners had paid to Vickers Armstrong for the construction of the ship.