KUWAIT, 19 May 2005 — Kuwait plans transportation infrastructure projects and upgrades worth more than $4 billion over the next few years, a top Public Works Ministry official said yesterday.
Abdulalteef Al-Dakheel, undersecretary for roads and sanitary projects, told Reuters the projects include a 36-km causeway across the Gulf from Kuwait City to Subiya costing 400 million-500 million dinars ($1.7 billion).
A second project involves a 72-km (45-mile) motorway from the capital to the planned city of Subiya to the north costing some 85 million dinars, Al-Dakheel said in an interview. “The road infrastructure projects we have in hand are over one billion dinars over the coming five years,” he told Reuters at the sidelines of a conference by Middle East Economic Digest (MEED) about major projects opportunities in Kuwait.
Al-Dakheel said his ministry has also submitted to the Council of Ministers a plan for a 500-million-dinar 35-km underground public rail network around Kuwait City, to be expanded later to the suburbs of Salmiya and Farwaniya.
The government of Kuwait is embarking on a host of multi-billion-dollar projects that it hopes will help it regain its former status as the Gulf region’s trade hub.
They include a major seaport on Boubyan Island off Subiya to be ready to receive vessels by the end of 2008 and a tourist hub on historic Failaka Island. The government plans to build a city of some 500,000 inhabitants at Subiya to help ease congestion on Kuwait City and its suburbs.
Al-Dakheel said the first project tenders will be in July when Kuwait-based companies will be invited to submit bids for the Subiya road, to be built in three phases of more than 20 km each.
Asked about tenders for Jaber Causeway from Kuwait City to Subiya, he said out of 59 international and local firms that showed interest 11 have been pre-qualified and six to eight are likely to be chosen to bid in the second half of this year.
Other projects in various stages of planning in and around the capital include a 90-million-dinar plan to extend and upgrade the First Ring Road and a 60-million-dinar development and overhaul of the Fourth Ring Road over six years or more to help ease traffic jams at several major intersections. Also planned is an extension and upgrade of the Fifth Ring Road at a cost of some 35 million dinars and works on the Second and Third Ring Roads to be finished by 2010, he said.