Iraq’s National Investment Commission (NIC) is courting international developers and contractors to help finance and build the remaining portions of its estimated $550m Basra Sports City project.

Baghdad has committed to finishing the 360-acre Basra Sports City by the time Iraq hosts the Gulf Cup of Nations football tournament in early 2013 and several of the unfinished sections have been given priority status as a result.

Full exemption from corporate taxes and fees for up to 15 years lead the list of incentives offered to foreign construction companies. Other incentives include:

• A 3-year exemption from import fees
• The right to employ as many foreign workers as necessary
• The right to repatriate 100 per cent of investment and profits

In early 2009 Iraq’s Sports and Youth ministry awarded the main construction contract for the city’s 65,000-seat sports stadium to a joint venture of the local Abdullah Aouiz al-Jubouri Contracting Company and US-based Newport Global Technologies.

While the stadium project is moving ahead on schedule, neither developers nor contractors have been appointed on any of the remaining projects, a source from the municipal investment commission in Basra tells MEED. 

The Basra Sports City masterplan allocates two 10,000-square-metre sites for the construction of two 5-star hotels. It also calls for the construction of eight 1,600 sq m residential complexes, four shopping malls, four practice football pitches, a 10,000-seat stadium and a 100-metre tunnel.

The masterplan includes an amphitheatre, a cinema, boutique retail space, a bowling alley, international restaurant facilities, an Olympic-sized swimming pool and several parks and playgrounds.

Basra province has been the scene of significant development recently as plans have been announced to build a dry port and four more berths at Umm Qasr and designs are underway for the estimated $6bn Grand Faw port (MEED 26:4:10).