MANAMA — Bahrain-based Gulf Finance House (GFH) announced that it has reached an agreement with the government of Algeria to establish a $3-billion GFH Economic Development Zone on the outskirts of Algiers.
The zone would be the primary commercial development within the new master planned city of Bouinan and is expected to have an end value of more than $3 billion once completed on a 2.8 square km site. The GFH special projects team is currently working with industry experts to finalize the business districts of the zone and the business clusters within each business district. It is expected that the zone could include energy, financial, telecommunications, and IT business districts as well as residential development and leisure facilities.
GFH Chairman, Esam Janahi and Cherif Rahmani, minister of land planning, the environment and tourism held meeting prior to the announcement of the project. The concept of the zone was presented to the minister this week by Peter Panayiotou, Acting CEO of GFH at the “Assises Nationales et Internationales du Tourisme” conference in Algiers. Janahi said: “GFH is continuing to build on its leadership in the field of economic infrastructure. The GFH Economic Development Zone in Algiers is another example of the credibility that the GFH team has with the highest level of government and confirms the value that governments see in our end-to-end economic development program.”
Rahmani said: “We are pleased with the unique approach taken by GFH and the vision they have shown. Economic development is vital to any nation and we believe that this initiative will act as a catalyst that will bring new ideas and new industries to Algeria. This is very important. We are a relatively prosperous nation but we would like to see a greater proportion of our gross domestic product being generated by other industries and sectors, as currently there is a certain amount of concentration in the oil and gas sector. GFH will help to create additional interest in Algeria particularly amongst global corporations.”