Qatar Daily News

The drop in construction costs prompted by the economic crisis is serving as an impetus for the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries to press ahead with infrastructure schemes.

According to a report published in the latest issue of the Middle East Business Intelligence magazine, there are road projects worth as much as $38.6bn planned or underway in the GCC.

Qatar accounts for some 15% of the total road projects in the GCC, worth a combined $6bn. A major project in the pipeline is the Doha Expressway, an ambitious road development linking the north and south of the country through the capital. It is estimated that the 13-phase project will cost more than QR8bn to execute.
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The pace and scale of coastal construction in the GCC has been rapid in the past five years and despite the recent economic slowdown, there are still significant areas of growth with mega projects in construction and new tenders being announced.

Marine & Coastal Engineering Middle East will bring together key stakeholders from a diverse range of cutting edge marine projects, representing a unique opportunity to benchmark the region’s leading marine developments. The event set to open tomorrow, and continues between 20 – 23 June, 2010 at Millennium Hotel, Doha, Qatar

The meet would discuss the need for adopting a holistic and sustainable approach to waterfront developments. The experts would also discuss the effects of coastal and marine construction on ecosystem in the Middle East.

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The Qatari government and state-owned companies plan to spend as much as $100 billion on infrastructure projects within the next four years, Finance Minister Yousef Hussain Kamal said today.

“The main projects are roads, sewage treatment, water treatment, and infrastructure like ports and airports,” he told reporters in Istanbul at a Turkish-Arab economic conference
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The 40km causway linking gas exporter Qatar to the island kingdom of Bahrain was set to play a key role in improving infrastructure connections between members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), but has been beset by problems.

“The project has seen many, many problems (and there were) also the political tensions,” a source close to the project told Reuters, adding “the team has been significantly decreased.”
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Qatar opens on Tuesday an ethylene plant at with an annual production capacity of 1.3 million tonnes in the northern city of Ras Laffan.

“The total cost of the project has reached 1.37 billion dollars (1.05 billion euros),” Energy Minister Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiya told reporters during the inauguration ceremony.

Ras Laffan Olefins Company Limited (RLOC), the owner of the plant, plans to increase its production capacity to 1.6 million tonnes per year, organisers said.

The plant will push forward the petrochemical industry in the small Gulf emirate known for its wealth in gas production.
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The Gulf’s construction industry has been particularly hard hit by recent global financial shenanigans, but recent news from EC Harris, a UK based asset consultancy, suggest that in the coming year staff who work in the Saudi and Qatar construction industry can expect anything up to a 15% rise in their salaries, due to a lack of sufficient skilled staff in the two countries.

This is good news for the UAE too, after a number of Emirates construction companies recently ventured into both Saudi and Qatar in the wake of significant new building projects that have been financed largely by government revenues.
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Work has begun on Qatar’s multibillion-dollar metro and ground rail projects, set to be completed in phases until 2016, and central to the emirate’s dreams of hosting the 2022 football World Cup.

The three projects – a metro network within Greater Doha, overground railways covering Qatar, and then links to the rest of the GCC region – are expected to cost as much as $40bn.

Metro rail project will cover a total distance of 354km and the trains will run at speeds of 80 to 160km per hour.
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Egypt will sign a deal this week with Abu Dhabi’s Masdar to build a 200 megawatt wind farm, as part of a plan to generate 20 percent of the country’s energy needs from renewable sources by 2020, an official said on Wednesday.

Egypt, an oil and gas producer, has been developing wind power along its eastern Red Sea coast. It already has wind farms at Zafarana and Hurghada in the area and now has installed capacity of 430 megawatts of wind energy.
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Prices of most construction materials in Abu Dhabi fell in 2009 with steel leading the declines after plummeting nearly 44 percent, latest figures released by Statistics Centre Abu Dhabi have showed.

The fall in prices of most types of building materials were as a result of the impact of the global economic crisis, SCAD said.

Construction of residential units in the UAE, and especially Dubai, slowed dramatically last year and house prices fell in Dubai by up to 50 percent in the downturn that swept the world in the fourth quarter of 2008.

However, the average price of aggregate and sand bucked the trend and registered a rise of 6.7 percent in 2009 in the UAE capital compared to 2008.
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