Supervisor Elham AbolFateh
Editor in Chief Mohamed Wadie

Egypt, China join hands in Egypt's new capital


Mon 09 Jul 2018 | 02:03 PM
Yassmine Elsayed

 

SEE – July 9: Chinese officails announced that an ongoing construction of the Central Business District (CBD) undertaken by China State Construction Engineering Corporation (CSCEC) in Egypt's new administrative capital Some 50 km east of the capital Cairo, is expected to be finished within 3.5 years "at maximum."

Xinhua news agency quoted Chang Weicai, chief executive officer of the CSCEC Egypt company that at the moment, dozens of Chinese and Egyptians are surveying the geological conditions of the construction ground, preparing statistics for architects to design the 20 residential, administrative, commercial and services towers scattered on the 1.7-million-square-meter ground.

He revealed that the construction work will start in several months after geological survey, adding that over 90 percent of workers will be hired locally as required by local regulation.

Ayman Girgis, a 38-year-old field construction engineer, described the site of the CBD as a "beehive" striving to finish the work on time.

"The Chinese workers are working 24 hours in turn along with their Egyptian colleagues," Girgis told Xinhua.

The project is intended to offer thousands of jobs and stimulate the sluggish economy, while Egypt's government institutions are scheduled to be relocated to the new capital within the second half of 2019.

The new capital is supposed to be one of the solutions to the chronic congestion of Cairo with a demographic burden of more than 20 million inhabitants.