Bahrain’s Gulf Finance House (GFH) has signed a strategic partnership with Turkish company Demtas Group to develop its estimated $3bn Tunis Financial Harbour (TFH) project in Tunisia.

The Turkish developer has signed a strategic partnership with GFH to move forward with construction and infrastructure work on the scheme, which will commence after GFH receives final infrastructure approval from the Tunisian government. The government has already approved the masterplan for the scheme.

In January, GFH announced that it had invited contractors to prequalify for construction packages on the development.

The planned development will comprise several clusters, including: a financial district, a marina, retail developments, a golf course and international schools. The development will cover a total area of 5.2 million square metres.

The project has suffered from a number of delays since the project was launched in 2007 as GFH was heavily affected by the global financial crisis and the collapse of the region’s real estate market. An over-reliance on real estate projects and mismatched short-term funding and long-term assets resulted in the bank recording net losses of $728m in 2009 and $349m in 2010.

However, significant restructuring enabled the bank to record a net profit of $4.1m for the first nine months of 2011 and the bank is keen to move ahead with the Tunis scheme.