Arab Contractors Company is not to start executing Egypt’s first monorail project in January 2016, Chairman Mohsen Salah announced Sunday, adding that this national project is still understudy.
AC is among the Egyptian-Canadian consortium that has been chosen to carry out the project.
Besides AC, the consortium includes Canadian Bombardier Inc., World’s largest manufacturer of both planes and trains, in addition to Egypt’s Orascom Construction (OC).
The 52 kilometer (32 mile) monorail project is to link 6th of October City with Giza and Cairo governorates and set to be completed by mid-2018.
He clarified that the Egyptian-Canadian consortium is still studying the mechanisms of financing the project besides the executing methods and the schedule for finishing it.
Salah noted that monorail project is one of the largest projects that the company is studying in cooperation with other alliances, clarifying that the monorail train will be operated according to the international operational systems.
The $1.5 billion-monorail project would include 17 stations; 12 in first phase and 5 more in the second phase.
The project will be financed through a loan that Egypt’s state-run New Urban Communities Authority (NUCA) will pay it back over 14 years.
Recently, the banking consortium that would provide necessary funds for the project has raised his offer to NUCA by 1.3 billion Egyptian pounds to be 6.6 billion pounds (US$822.2 million).
