The project was founded by the Chairman of the Suez Canal Authority, Mohab Mamish, on 5 August 2014.

The enlarged canal will allow ships to sail in both directions at the same time over much of the canal's length. Also, the depth will increase by 20 meters allowing the more modern bigger freight ships to pass easily.
This will decrease waiting hours from 18 to 11 hours for most ships.

This will double the capacity of the Suez Canal from 49 to 97 ships a day which will increase the yearly income by 259%
The New Suez Canal works are expected to be 72 km (45 mi) long. The second lane is expected to begin from the 35th km to the 164th km.

The construction, which was scheduled to take three to five years, was instead ordered by President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to be completed in a year
The revenues from the Suez Canal (after the completion of the New Suez Canal) will jump from 5 billion dollars to 12.5 billion dollars annually.
The Egyptian government has said that these revenues will be used to transform the cities along the Canal (Ismailia, Suez, and Port Said) into international trading centers such as the building of glass factories, cement factories, and fish farms, and the completion of the valley of technology
The project costs around 60 billion Egyptian pounds . 30 billion Egyptian pounds will be for digging the new canal and the other 30 billion will be for building 7 new tunnels in Ports Said and Ismailia to connect the Sinai peninsula to the Egyptian homeland.

President el-Sisi refused to allow foreign investors to invest in the project, but rather he urged Egyptians to participate in funding the project
Egyptians citizens can contribute by buying a 1000-Egyptian pound bond, and those Egyptians living abroad can donate by buying 100-dollars share.
After President el-Sisi announced the new megaproject, Egypt's stocks rose to the highest level in the past six years.
He said that the three banks of Banque Misr, National Bank of Egypt, and Banque du Caire would issue the 5-year certificates with a 12 percent interest rate and quarterly dividends.