Egypt Plans to Construct New Capital City at Estimated Cost of US$80bn

Gulf developers are said to be involved in the private-funded project

Egypt will announce the construction of a new city, which will serve as its new capital, Investment Minister Ashraf Salman told UAE newspaper The National Tuesday.

The government will relocate to the new city within a planned twelve years, which will be located east of Cairo, near the Suez Canal. The city will only be formally greenlit next month at a conference in Sharm-el-Sheik.

Gulf-based companies are contracted with the building process, in what is expected to be an $80 billion project, including Abu-Dhabi based developer Eagle Hills. Dubai developer Emaar Properties is also said to be involved, with Emaar responsible for several major projects in the Arab world, including the Saudi port metropolis King Abdullah Economic City, valued at $86 million dollars.

Salman said that the yet-unnamed city shows Egypt is “really committed to an open-market economy” and will be funded privately. “The government will incur zero cost in the city,” he said, “(it) will be totally developed, planned and executed by a private sector company.”

The new capital will have retail, industrial, commercial and residential areas, in addition to the government buildings, Salman also said.

The involvement of Gulf companies, which often have direct connections to powerful government officials and various influential members of royal families from the region, hints at efforts by Egyptian President’s Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to strengthen the ties between the Gulf kingdoms and his country. 

The royal families of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and UAE have pledged $12 billion in aid to Egypt since the military coup of 2013, with all said governments holding a hostile view of Islamist influence in the region.

In another display of increasing interconnectivity between the powers, Sisi arrived in Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh Sunday for a series of meetings with Saudi officials.

Source: i24News