Egypt to splash out $4 billion on new Suez project Egypt is planning to build a new Suez Canal alongside the existing waterway, as part of a multi-billion dollar project to invest in port and shipping infrastructure. This will be a vital source of hard currency to the Arab country. The new canal will be part of a bigger project to expand Suez port and shipping facilities into a major global trade hub. “This giant project will be the creation of a new Suez Canal parallel to the current channel of a total length of 72 kilometers,” Mohab Mamish, chairman of the Suez Canal authority, told a conference on the project in Ismailia, one of the port’s on the waterway. Mamish said that the project would consist of 35 kilometers of “dry digging,” in other words a totally new canal, and a further 37 kilometers of “expansion and deepening” of the existing waterway, so that two large ships can pass each other. Plans have existed for years to develop the 76,000 square kilometers of land along the canal to generate more income and expand the waterway to take bigger ships. The cost of digging out the new channel has been put at a conservative $4 billion and will be finished in an ambitious five-year plan, although Egypt is hoping to finish it in an even more optimistic three years. Egypt is in desperate need of investment. After Morsi was forced out of power last year, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates gave $12 billion in cash and petroleum products to prop up the Egyptian economy, but it still remains in a perilous state.
Posted on: Tue, 05 Aug 2014 17:01:43 +0000
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