Business | Construction
Bahrain company to develop $3b economic zone in Algeria
Project to include several business districts in the new city of Bouinan.
- Staff Report
- Published: 00:34 February 19, 2008
Dubai: Bahrain-based Gulf Finance House (GFH) yesterday said it had reached in principle agreement with Algerian government to establish a GFH Econ-omic Development Zone on the outskirts of Algiers.
"The zone will be the primary commercial development within the new master planned city of Bouinan and is expected to have an end value of more than Dh11 billion ($3 billion) once completed on a site extending to 2.8 square kilometres," an e-mailed statement said.
The Algerian zone is the second GFH Economic Development Zone, swiftly following the launch of the first, the GFH Mumbai Economic Development Zone in India, in 2007.
The announcement followed recent talks between GFH chairman Esam Janahi and Cherif Rahmani, Minister of Land Planning, the Environment and Tourism.
Esam Janahi commented: "GFH is continuing to build on its leadership in the field of economic infra-structure. The GFH Econ-omic Development Zone - Algiers is another example of the credibility that the GFH team has with the highest level of government and confirms the value that governments see in our end-to-end economic development programme."
Making a difference
He added: "The GFH team always works with the best industry experts we can find internationally and invests much time, money and effort in analysing national economies and engineering ways of increasing the strength of those econ-omies. This is our core business. We aim to make a difference in Algeria."
The GFH special projects team is currently working with international industry experts to finalise the business districts of the zone and the business clusters within each business district. It is expected that the zone could include energy, financial, telecommunications, and IT business districts as well as residential development and leisure facilities.
Algeria enjoys by far the highest national GDP in North Africa and has averaged 5 per cent growth over the past six years thanks to the oil price boom. The oil and gas sector accounts for 46 per cent of Algeria's GDP.
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