DUBAI, 6 March 2008 — State-owned Dubai Water & Electricity Authority (Dewa) will wait until the second half of the year to return to the debt market after delaying a 2007 bond sale, it said yesterday.
Dewa has said it will need to invest $19.1 billion during the next four years, raising most of that through loans and bonds. Last year, it shelved a plan to sell bonds after the US mortgage crisis made investors more reluctant to lend.
“For sukuk (Islamic bonds) we are waiting for the market to recover,” Dewa Chief Executive Officer Saeed Mohamed Ahmed Al-Tayer told reporters. “For sukuk or long-term loans, we would only go into the market after June.”
Dewa is seeking to increase capacity by 150 percent by 2012 from 5,000 megawatts of electricity and 255 million gallons per day of water as demand surges in the Gulf Arab emirate.
Long-term loans would have a maturity of 10 to 15 years, Tayer said. Sukuk forbid the receipt of interest.
“Now, we are only looking for short- or medium-term loans,” he said.