Egypt’s government has signed a $428.7m deal for France to fund the purchase of 64 trains for the Cairo Metro.

The agreement was signed with France’s ambassador to Egypt on 14 December, and will involve Paris providing Cairo with $214.4m as a concessional loan, which is to be repaid over 53 years. The loan will have a 20-year grace period at an annual interest rate of 0.1 per cent. The second half of the finance will come in the form of credit facilities by French credit company Coface.

France has already funded much of the construction of the existing three metro lines. According to Naglaa el-Ahwany, Egypt’s international cooperation minister, French financing of Cairo’s metro network totalled $1.5bn between 1979 and 2012.

Egypt’s central bank has reported that French foreign direct investments (FDI) in Egypt for 2013/14 reached $347.4m, while the volume of trade between the two countries was $3.1bn in the same period.

The funding agreement of the trains comes as work continues on Line 3 of Cairo Metro.

In October, two contracting groups submitted bids for the contract to build the third phase of Cairo metro Line 3.

The bidders are:

• Vinci (France) / Bouygues (France) / Arab Contractors (local) / Orascom Construction Industries (local)
• OHL(Spain) / Consolidated Contractors Company (CCC) (Athens-based)

Line 3 of the Cairo metro system has a total length of almost 43.5 kilometres, serving 36 stations and is being built in four phases. Phase 3 covers 40 per cent of the total line length and extends between Attaba in the north and Cairo University in the south of the city.