JEDDAH: Emaar Economic City (EMAAR) plans to raise SR1 billion to help finance construction of the King Abdullah Economic City and will spend SR13 billion developing the Saudi Arabian project over the next four years.

The company, a unit of Emaar Properties , expects to arrange the loans from two or three banks before the end of 2016, Fahd Al-Rasheed, CEO of Emaar Economic City, was quoted as saying in a media report.

“Our business plan doesn’t call for more than a billion riyals,” he added in the Bloomberg report.

“We’re spending about SR13 billion over the next four years, which is a significant amount but we are doing a lot of it through sales. Our cash flow is healthy.”

KAEC, as the project is known, will include a port and business district as well as residences and resorts. It will be built over 168 square kilometers, according to the project’€™s website.

About 70 companies, such as drugmakers Pfizer Inc. and Sanofi and French energy producer Total SA (FP) have already leased land to build plants, and a further 30 companies may sign up before the end of the year, Al-Rasheed said.

Emaar Economic is building 6,000 housing units at the project, located on the coast at Rabigh, and is seeking to double that amount every year over the next five years, he said.

About 2,800 people are living in the city, he said.

An industrial zone covering 28 million square meters is also being developed inside the city and is due for completion in 2016, Al Rasheed said. The project will also include 10 hotels by 2020.

KAEC’s container-port terminal is already operational and will have the capacity to handle about 1.3 million 20-foot equivalent unit containers by the end of the year, he said.