Minister of Housing Mostafa Madbouly announced Sunday that his ministry would work on developing Badr City, located in north eastern Cairo, before implementing the new administrative capital, the Capital Cairo (CC). This comes in line with government's inclusive plan to develop cities to host investment projects, he added. According to Madbouly, the 33-year-old Badr City has received major attention last year, as EGP 1.1bn were pumped into the city in 2014. "Badr City has several opportunities in the industrial sector that make it a competitive industrial-residential city," the minister said in a statement. Around 17,000 residential units have been constructed in the city, under the framework of the social housing programme, in one year and a half, as well as another 19,000 units built since the establishment of Badr City. Badr City had not been developed since its establishment, Madbouly said, noting that the New Urban Communities Authority (NUCA) is simultaneously working on implementing new projects in the city and developing old districts. The new administrative Cairo Capital project was announced during the Egypt Economic Development Conference (EEDC), in Sharm El-Sheikh last March, as the country's latest sky-reaching project with a total cost of $80bn and an area of 700 sqkm. The project will be developed by Capital City Partners, a private real estate firm chaired by tycoon Mohamed Al-Abbar, who is behind Dubai's Burj Khalifa. The infrastructure plan for the project is expected to be completed in August, according to Madbouly. Last week, the NUCA issued seven bids in four cities as part of its framework to develop lands in the 1m units social housing programme. The bids include the establishment of a youth centre in Beni Suef and a nursery in New Aswan. It will also include building a traffic unit in New Cairo and utilities for 2,151 pieces of land in the new Borg Al-Arab area near Alexandria. The government builds 200,000 residential units annually as part of the programme, with the cost of the units not exceeding EGP 135,000, according to the programme's executive body head Salah Hassan. The budget for the NUCA increased by 100% in the current fiscal budget, to EGP 28bn. In May 2015, the UAE signed a cooperation protocol with Egypt's Ministry of Housing, agreeing to finance the construction of 50,000 units in 17 governorates at a value of EGP 11bn.
