CAIRO: Swiss-based developer Orascom Development Holding is finishing a deal to build a 10 million square meter coastal tourist village in Europe, an executive told Reuters on Thursday.
The project will be similar in style and target audience to the company s flagship development El Gouna, a high-end resort on Egypt s Red Sea coast, vice chairman and co-CEO Amr Sheta said.
We are in an advanced stage in finalizing a new coastal destination with an expected size of 10 million square meters, he said. We finished our part. We re waiting for others to finish their part.
Sheta declined to say where the project would be located or how much it would cost until the deal had been approved by the European country s parliament. He had no timeline for that approval.
I ve learned never to try to predict politics, he said.
Orascom Development s main presence is in Egypt but it has projects in Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Switzerland and Morocco. It recently announced plans for new projects in the UK and Turkey.
The company reported a net profit of roughly $42 million in the first half of 2009, up from $39 million in the same period a year earlier.
