Egyptian construction firm, Arab Contractors says volume of businesses in Egypt and abroad rose y-o-y by four billion Egyptian pounds ($112.6 million) thanks to recent works in the country's new capital city project. Mohsen Salah – Chairman of Arab Contractors – told Amwal Al Ghad on Tuesday that the volume of works designated for Egyptian new capital administrative city is worth two billion pounds, involving providing key utilities, road, and some housing projects there. Arab Contractors is also implementing utilities works in New El Alamein City, northwest of Cairo, at cost of 500 million pounds, Salah added. This comes in addition to a large bunch of infrastructure and road projects Arab Contractors captured in some African markets, at cost of more than one billion pounds, the Egyptian official said. Arab Contractors' total volume of businesses eventually surged to 19 billion pounds during the current financial year, Salah stated. The several national projects Arab Contractors was tasked with have contributed to compensate the sharp decline in the company's full year business volume which reached 15 billion pounds during 2015, Salah concluded. New Capital City The proposed new capital of Egypt is a large-scale project announced by Egyptian housing minister Mostafa Madbouly at the Egypt Economic Development Conference on 13 March 2015. The new, yet-unnamed city is to be located 45 kilometers (28 miles) east of Cairo and just outside the Second Greater Cairo Ring Road in a currently largely undeveloped area halfway to the seaport city of Suez. According to the plans, the city would become the new administrative and financial capital of Egypt, housing the main government departments and ministries, as well as foreign embassies. On 700 square kilometres (270 sq miles) total area, it would have a population of five million people, though it is estimated that the figure could rise to seven million. The city is planned to consist of 21 residential districts and 25 "dedicated districts." Its downtown is to have skyscrapers and a tall monument said to resemble the Eiffel Tower and Washington Monument. The city will also have a park double the size of New York City's Central Park, artificial lakes, about 2,000 educational institutions, a technology and innovation park, 663 hospitals and clinics, 1,250 mosques, 40,000 hotel rooms, a major theme park four times the size of Disneyland, 90 square kilometers of solar energy farms, an electric railway link with Cairo, and a new international airport at the site of the preexisting Wadi al Jandali Airport currently used by the Egyptian Air Force.
