KUWAIT: Kuwait has approved a contract worth 999.85 ‍million Kuwaiti ‍dinars ($3.3 billion) with a Chinese state-owned ​company to build the country’s largest sewage ⁠treatment plant, the official gazette reported on ⁠Sunday.

The Central Agency ‌for Public Tenders approved moving ahead with a “direct contract” between the ⁠Ministry of Public Works and China State Construction Engineering Corp to build the North Kabd sewage plant.

The project is ⁠part of a ​broader set of China-backed developments in Kuwait, including the $4 billion ‍Mubarak Al-Kabeer port project signed in December with ​China Communications Construction Co.

The sewage facility will process up to 1 million cubic metres of waste water a day. The Chinese company will design, build, operate and maintain the plant over a 10-year period.

Oil-rich Kuwait struggles to reuse treated wastewater, much of ⁠which is discharged into ‌the sea due to limited storage capacity and infrastructure problems. Quality constraints confine ‌reuse to ⁠irrigation only.

($1 = 0.3052 Kuwaiti dinars) (Reporting By Ahmed ⁠Hagagy; Editing by David Holmes)