Egypt’s National Authority for Tunnels (NAT) has clarified that the planned monorail to link 6th October City and Sheikh Zayed City with Giza has not been cancelled or postponed.

Instead, the offers made in 2015 by two consortiums, one led by Canada’s Bombardier and the other by China Gezhouba Group Corporation (CGGC), are still undergoing evaluation.

”Discussions are ongoing between the government and Bombardier,” the source said, without elaborating whether a parallel negotiation is ongoing with CGGC.

Estimated to cost at least $1.5bn, the planned 52-kilometre monorail is to be procured via direct negotiation rather than an open tender.

The project was initially being supervised by the Ministry of Housing, Utilities and Urban Development, which prematurely announced in May 2015 that it had commissioned the Canadian-led team to build the project. Egypt’s Ministry of Transport (MoT) subsequently took over the scheme in late 2015, and said it would be working closely with the housing mInistry on the implementation. CGGC subsequently made its offer.

It is understood both groups have proposed an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC)-cum-finance approach, with the Chinese group understood to have proposed providing loans through Export-Import Bank of China.

If the proposed EPC-cum-finance model is not approved by parliament, then a build-operate-transfer (BOT) model that would require an open tender could be considered, MEED was told in January. 

In October 2015, local media reported that a consortium of 10 banks had submitted an offer to fund half of the project cost at £E6.6bn ($822m).The offer was submitted to the New Urban Communities Authority (Nuca), an agency affiliated with the housing ministry, which was understood to have agreed to fund the scheme and repay the banks over a 14-year period.

The banking consortium is understood to include:

• National Bank of Egypt
• Banque Misr (local)
• Commercial International Bank (local)
• QNB Al-Ahli (local/Qatar)
• HSBC (UK)
• Arab African International Bank (local/Kuwait)
• Bank Audi (Lebanon)
• Credit Agricole (France)
• Arab Bank (Jordan-based)