India may involve in Egypt’s new capital project

Minister of Housing, Moustafa Madbouli, met Tuesday with representatives of one of the Indian construction companies to showcase opportunities to carry out some projects in the Egyptian new capital administrative city.

The meeting took place in the presence of the Indian ambassador to Cairo and the minister assistant, Randa Minshawy.

The Indian officials and representatives of the company expressed their willingness to participate in the new capital city project.

Madbouli suggested that the company could establish the “Indiatown” in the country’s new capital.

The minister said they will rely mostly on the Egyptian construction companies to implement the projects; however some international companies would get some promising opportunities to carry out a number of projects in the new capital city.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has set a two-year deadline to complete the first phase of Egypt’s new administrative capital project, starting January 2016.

Sisi met Sunday with Former Prime Minister Ibrahim Mehleb, Minister of Housing Mostafa Madbouli, Projects Adviser to Minister of Defense Amir Ahmed Al-Sayed, head of military engineering authority General Emad al-Alfy and chief-of-staff of the military engineering authority Major General Kamel Al-Wazeer.

Egypt contracted a Chinese company to start implementing the first phase, said Madbouli.

Egypt signed the deal with China State Construction Engineering Corporation, also known as China Construction, in September. The company is tasked with “studying the building and financing” of the administrative part of the new capital.

The new capital will be constructed over 490 kilometres squared of land and is slated to include 1.1 million housing units to serve 5 million citizens, Madbouli said.

The capital will also include 10,000 roads and a new airport and will take between five to seven years to complete, he added.