The Egyptian government will present its Suez Canal development plan in January 2015 to both local and international financial institutions and a number of companies, Mahmoud Rizq, director of the department of planning at the Suez Canal Authority (SCA), said.
The plan will be presented at an international conference organised to attract funding for the implementation of the project. The government will begin receiving and screening offers as early as February 2015, according to Rizq. Fourteen consortia competed to prepare the plan for the development of the Suez Canal and an independent local committee was formed comprising international expertise in order to evaluate the bids and choose the winning consortium.
Rizq added that he expects the contract with the winning consortium to be announced within days, and that the consortium will finish and present the plan to the cabinet within six months after the announcement. According to Rizq, “additional bids for civil works for infrastructure will be proposed in February 2015.”
The project will include the ports of Port Said, Al-Arish and Ain Sokhna, in addition to the economic zone in the northwest Gulf of Suez, according to Risq, and a wide variety of industries will be included.
Prime Minister Ibrahim Mehleb said an agreement was reached with the Suez Canal Company for fish farming, that this project would generate jobs and good revenues, and would be set up along a 100km area east of the Suez Canal. Benefits are to be expected in food security and employment of fisheries.
Source: Daily News Egypt
