Monday, Jun 07, 2010
DOHA (Zawya Dow Jones)--Infrastructure cost at Qatar's Lusail City, a 35-square kilometer mixed-use project just outside the capital Doha, is around $5 billion and more than two thirds of the project's land has been sold, a top company executive said Monday.
"Infrastructure is $5 billion and 70% of the land has been sold," Essa Mohammed Ali Kaldari, chief executive officer of Lusail Real Estate Development Co., the unit of Qatari Diar that is building Lusail, told reporters at a press conference.
Phase 1A of the project will be finished by the end of this year, with Phase 1 slated for completion by late 2011, Kaldari said, adding that the development consisted of four phases.
Lusail, an extension to the north of Doha, will house around 190,000 residents when complete in 2014 and will provide office space for 170,000. It will have its own light rail network together with hotels, golf courses and shopping malls.
The development will house a significant population that will be displaced by the redevelopment of older parts of the city near the existing airport.
"Most of Doha is being redeveloped so people will need to move," Kaldari said. "You have natural growth as well with the oil and gas sector as the backbone of the economy."
Qatar, the largest exporter of liquefied natural gas, has a rapidly growing population--currently at 1.67 million--due to strong demand for an expatriate workforce to fill the Gulf Arab state's large program of infrastructure projects.
But oil and gas projects are slowing down over the next couple of years, leading to a possible slowdown in population growth and exacerbating the oversupply in the real-estate market, a factor that is already hurting prices and rents.
-By Alex Delmar-Morgan, Dow Jones Newswires; +974 659 9818; alex.delmar-morgan@dowjones.com
Copyright (c) 2010 Dow Jones & Co.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
07-06-10 0815GMT
