EIIC to build $5b Algerian green belt

Algiers: Riding a wave of Gulf Arab investor confidence in North Africa, Emirates International Investment Co (EIIC) plans to build a $5 billion park to give crowded Algiers a "green belt" where stressed residents can unwind.

Abu Dhabi-based EIIC will use its own resources to finance Dounya Parc on 670 hectares in the Algerian capital, with 25 per cent of the land set aside for commercial and residential use, company official Khayam Turki said on Monday.

"There are a lot of incentives, tax breaks, but also a political eagerness to see us start something," said Turki, director general of EIIC unit Societe des Parcs d'Alger, which is developing the park on the Mediterranean city's southern side.

The venture is the latest example of a Gulf Arab investor rush to North Africa, where Arabs are challenging traditional European business dominance by capturing a growing share of the telecom, tourism and banking markets.

New destinations

North African businessmen say western suspicion of Arabs in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US pushed Arab countries to find new destinations for the reserves built up from oil prices.

Turki said Arabs as investors and tourists were increasingly curious about the variety of Arab cultures. "Something happened after September 11 - the Arab world's identification with itself is much stronger," he said. "The Gulf countries are investing much more in Egypt and North Africa.

"People from Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco are also travelling much more in the Gulf and Middle East as tourists. This is very new," he said.

"For example, Arabs from Morocco are very different from the other parts of the Arab world. So now we have opened a big market, and we are all here to discover our neighbours. It's not the only reason [for Arab business success], but it's something."

The top Arab investor in Algeria is Egypt's Orascom Telecom and Orascom Construction Industries, with almost $10 billion invested in telecom, cement, and water desalination. Qatar Telecommunications Co is also present in the mobile sector.

Emaar is planning to invest $20 billion in development projects in and around Algiers.

Need

Local business people in Algeria, a member of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) slowly emerging from years of political violence, say the country is in dire need of greater investment and exposure to international best practices in services.

Crowded, rundown Algiers is a prime example. The city's up to four million population, beset by homelessness and unemployment and traumatised by periodic political violence, has few public parks and those that exist are overcrowded at weekends.

"Seventy five per cent of the park is going to be a huge investment with no return," Turki said. "We have it for five years to make it happen, and then it is given back to the state to operate."

"So we are going to make the money on the buildings - the hotels, the towers, the offices," he said, adding he hoped that the park would encourage Algerians to holiday at home.

EIIC also has other projects in Algeria including a $200-million luxury hotel development near Algiers, a dairy farm complex in the south and an electrical cable manufacturing company.

Features: Priority to open spaces

With help from US-based consultancy McKinsey on strategy and US engineering company Parsons on master planning, EIIC plans to designate 75 per cent of Dounya Parc's surface area as rolling grassland and botanical gardens for recreational use.

Due to be completed in five years, EIIC will surround the main central park with a commercial and residential district that will include hotels, lakes, a convention centre, golf course and hospitals and provide about 25,000 jobs.