Egypt is planning to tender 19 projects worth up to £E29bn ($4.06bn) using funding from public-private partnerships (PPP) by the end of 2016.

At least seven projects, worth E£9bn, are ready to tender in 2015. By the end of 2016, a further E£16-20bn-worth ($2.24-2.8bn) of PPP schemes will have been tendered.

Speaking on the sidelines of MEED’s Invest in Egypt conference, Atter Ezzat Hannoura, director, PPP Central Unit at Egypt’s Finance Ministry, said bank appetite, from local and international institutions, to lend to these projects is growing.

“The good thing now is that the banks are heavily competing with each other,” he told MEED, referring specifically to the funding of the planned Abu Ruwash wastewater treatment plant, which is being tendered this year, with bids due in December 2014, and the contract set to be awarded in March 2015.

“This competition will diminish the margin and the overall project costs will be much less – which is good for the government,” said Hannoura.

Projects to be tendered in 2015 include the Nile River Bus service in Greater Cairo, which involves the rehabilitation of 16 berths and the construction of 12 new stations. The tender is to be released in January 2015 and the pre-feasibility study was completed this year.

Other projects in the pipeline include desalination plants, stadiums and ports.

One of the requirements of the PPP projects is that the responsibility for the financing lies with the private sector and the prospective bidders on a project must present a term sheet from banks if they wish to win a contract.

The Abu Ruwash project is to be initially financed via a bridge loan of between E£1-1.4bn to be raised by both international and local banks.

The loan agreement will be signed the same day as the contract award is made to ensure construction of the project can start as soon as possible. The loan will be in place for approximately nine months before it is replaced with project financing.

Projects ready for tender are:

• The 1.6 million million cubic metre-a-day (cm/d) Abu Rawash wastewater plant. Bids should be in on 28 December, with the award announced at end of January and the contract signed in March 2015.
• The Cairo Contact Centres Park in Al-Maadi. The project calls for a total of 38 buildings. “There are 11 buildings built. Eight of them are occupied and the other three are due for completion by next March,” Hannoura said. “We shall tender this in December or January.”
• Nile River Bus in Greater Cairo. “The concession calls for the rehabilitation of 16 existing berths and the construction of the new 12 ones,” Hannoura said. “The developer will buy the new fleet and operate the fleet for 30 years.”
• The rollout and automation of the notarisation offices. The project involves the Justice Minstry and Communications & Information Ministry. “We have about 400 offices nationwide. These will be automated and rehabilitated and all will be connected to a national data centre with a disaster recovery centre,” said Hannoura. “This project will have a direct impact on services for the people and reduce the transaction period from three hours or more to 20 minutes. A lot of internet and other services will be available.” 
• The Safaga Industrial port. “We are rehabilitating this port to a value-added port that exports industrial goods in a liquid form,” said Hannoura. “All the storage areas and tanks and liquids will be built. The second activity is importing livestock. There will be a platform, quarantine area and slaughterhouse and meat processing. The third activity is importing wheat and other grains. There will be 35 silos. There will be a supporting industrial zone.”

Hannnoura said projects at the pre-feasibility stage were:

• Desalination projects to be tendered in quarter two next year at Sharm el-Sheikh and Hurgada. One will 40,000 cm/d, the other 20,000 cm/d.
• The Helwan sewage treatment plant. This will have ultimate capacity of 500,000 cm/d that will be delivered in two equal phases.
• River transport. The Transport Ministry has four ports, three in the southern Nile area and one in the Delta. “This project is to be tendered by end of 2015 or early 2016,” Hannoura said. “We are working on the demand capacity forecast.”
• Three or four desalination projects and three wastewater plants. “We are working on the big wastewater plants,” said Hannoura. “The small wastewater plants for villages can’t be dealt with through BOT [build-operate-transfer].”
• Recycling cities. “We have already received three big plots of lands that will be dedicated for recycling cities,” Hannoura said. “They will receive solid waste plus hazardous, petroleum, dangerous, construction and hospital waste. This will be multi-type of project. We are preparing to invite specialised advisers to work on this. We have five sites and three we are working on.
• Four stadiums. We will be building four new stadiums in Luxor, Mersa Matruh, Hurgada and Sharm el-Sheikh. They will include sports camps and are to be put out to tender in March 2015.

The schemes are happening as Egypt pushes forwards with plans to decentralise PPP processes to allow individual government departments to carry out privatisation projects independently.

Hannoura said the department planned to create PPP satellite units other government departments. “We work with them and help them build capacity. They are entitled to run projects and to manage the contract after that with the assistance of the central unit.”