The National Investment Commission (NIC) of Iraq is to sign a deal with Emaar Properties of Dubai and Eagle Hills of Abu Dhabi to begin work on the 64,000-home Al-Rashid City in southern Baghdad.
In a statement on its official website last week, the Iraq’s cabinet secretariat said the NIC would complete contractual procedures for Al-Rashid City with Emaar and Eagle Hills after reaching agreement on the final form of the contract.
The statement did not say when work was expected to begin on 1,250ha site, but the Al-Iqtisad business news agency reported that construction may begin this year.
Emaar’s involvement in the scheme was announced last November, when Ali Mohsen Al-Alaq, the governor of Iraq’s central bank, announced that it was looking to begin work on the scheme in 2018 and giving the total investment as $10bn.
The plan to expand Al-Rashid has been under discussion for some time. In 2010, it was announced that a $20bn scheme would go ahead with an unnamed UAE company, with support from Brazil, Australia, Korea and Japan. A masterplan for that project, which illustrates the scale of the scheme, was produced by Polish designer N+ (pictured).
Image: N+’s design for the 2010 version of Al-Rashid city
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