Egypt’s Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly held a meeting Wednesday with Head of the National Center for Planning State Land Uses, Nasser Fawzy, and Deputy Chairperson of the Holding Company for Drinking Water and Sanitation, Assam Shoukr.
The meeting was held in order to follow up on the position of the lands to be offered to the private sector for the establishment of seawater desalination plants.
At the beginning of the meeting, Madbouly stressed the need to exert maximum efforts to provide ready-made lands for the establishment of seawater desalination plants, with a total capacity of about 2 m m3/day, in preparation for offering them to private sector companies, stressing the importance of preparing these lands without any obstacles.
This efforts came as part of the implementation of the strategic plan for sea water desalination until 2050, and the expansion towards establishing more desalination plants to provide clean water, especially in the coastal areas and governorates overlooking the Red and Mediterranean Bahrain and the Gulf of Suez, and expanding the base of private sector participation as a step towards increasing its participation in the economy over the next few years.
For his part, Fawzy reviewed the executive position of the first phase of the strategic plan for seawater desalination until 2050, where he dealt with the controls, limitations and criteria for selecting the proposed sites for desalination projects, addressing the proposed sites identified at the level of the governorates of the Republic for the implementation of projects, and reviewing the geographical distribution for these areas in 6 governorates.
While Shoukr reviewed the position of the lands required to be allocated for projects in the strategic plan for seawater desalination 2050.
Shoukr indicated during the presentation that large-capacity central water desalination plants were planned to be implemented; In order to rationalize the use of land and increase the capacity of desalination plants in order to obtain the lowest prices.
He added that the land is chosen directly on the sea for easy access to water and to reduce the economic cost of the project. In these projects, distance from sources of pollution, proximity to energy sources, proximity to water transmission lines and major lifting stations for ease of transporting produced water was taken into account.
He explained that 19 projects were identified in 10 governorates with a total capacity of 3.345 million cubic metres per day, during the first five-year plan 2020-2025, and these projects will be in the governorates of: Matrouh, Red Sea, South Sinai, Ismailia, Port Said, Suez, Daqahleya, and Beheira. Kafr El-Sheikh, and Alexandria.
