Tariq Saad al-Din, executive president of the Public Authority for Tourist Development, said that 14 Qatari companies were considering investing in Egypt’s tourist sector.
Al-Din, who recently returned from a trip to Doha, said he expected the companies to purchase two million square metres of land from the authority during the first stage of development, or 22% of available land which totals 9 million square metres.
The authority expects the amount of investments to total EGP 1bn.
The Qatari company Diyar put forth the largest number of investments.
The authority added that it did not currently have legal disagreements with Diyar over land it had purchased in the Sharm Al-Arab region of Hurghada, while Egyptian Prime Minister Hesham Qandil promised to work to solve any disagreements that could arise in future.
A source within the Diyar company said it would allow some of its purchased land to be used as air defence sites by the Egyptian military and that they were currently waiting for approval from the Operations Authority of the Armed Forces to implement the plan. The military’s proposed plan covers 30 million metres of land.
