(Photo by Sara Aggour)
Approximately two months have elapsed since the announcement of an Emirati partner in establishing and financing Egypt’s new administrative capital, no official signing has yet taken place.
“The huge details associated with the new administrative capital project are the reasons behind not announcing the signing of an agreement with the Emirati partner,” said Housing Minister Mostafa Madbouly.
Madbouly, however, added that by the end of this month, final contracts regarding the project are set to be signed.
He said the technical, legislative and regularity studies are significant and too large to yet be revealed.
“We’re not talking about a regular or small project, where the studies and details are already known and the model of the contracts are recurring, we’re talking about a new capital, a large scale project, with a lot of details covering several aspects,” Saif Farag, Urban Economics expert, told Daily News Egypt.
He added that the bigger the project is and the more details it contains, the more time it would take to reach an agreement for it.
Despite several entities already being involved, “in building a city, two months are a short period of time for defining all the guidelines and studies needed to reach an agreement”, he added.
It is possible that the government could not reach an agreement with the Emiratis, although this would not be considered a flaw in the government. Even if the current interested investor does not go through with the agreement, the government would have come a long way in creating the documents for another investor to participate.
“We’re talking about a new city that is bigger than Cairo, it is a huge project. Two months, and not even three, are enough to finalise the agreement. People shouldn’t rush it,” Magda Metwally Professor of Housing& Urban Development at the Building & Housing National Research Center, said.
The new capital project will cost $45bn, and will take between five to seven years to complete, Madbouly has previously said.
With a land area of approximately 700 sqkm, the new capital marks one of the largest Foreign Direct Investments (FDIs) in Egypt’s infrastructural development. The entire project is 12 times the area of Manhattan, seven times larger than Paris, and four times that of Washington DC, and is expected to house 7 million people upon completion.
