Orascom and Aqualia awarded GWI 'Water Deal of the Year'
Aqualia, the water subsidiary of Spanish domiciled Fomento de Construccion y Contratas, FCC has been awarded 'Water Deal of the Year'. The award was granted by Global Water Intelligence (GWI) for the deal, contracted in 2009, which has made the biggest contribution to the advancement of public-private partnerships (PPP) in the international water sector.
New Cairo WWTP financing, Egypt - What is it?
A 15-year EGP566 million ($102 million) debt package from a club of four Egyptian banks to meet 70% of the engineering, procurement and construction cost of a new 250,000m3/d wastewater treatment project to serve New Cairo city. The balance of the EPC cost is being met through developer equity.
Who is responsible?
A 50:50 developer consortium of Aqualia and Orascom Construction Industries closed the financing 7 months after being awarded the $480 million 20-year build-own-operate-transfer contract by the Ministry of Housing, Utilities and Urban Development. National Sociéte Générale Bank acted as facility agent on the debt package. The IFC acted as lead advisor to the Egyptian government on the project.
What makes it special?
• New Cairo is Egypt's first major PPP transaction, and it broke new ground in Egyptian infrastructure financing by harnessing liquidity among Egypt's domestic commercial lenders to secure long-term project debt.
• The sponsors overcame the lack of a precedent to establish a solid blueprint for wider regional and international participation in future Egyptian project financings.
• With Egypt's overarching PPP law still being hammered out, the New Cairo deal is a major vote of confidence from lenders in the government's infrastructure procurement strategy.
The award, presented at a ceremony in Paris yesterday presided by Her Majesty Queen Noor of Jordan, was collected by Miguel Jurado, Aqualia's Vice President and Head of International Operations and Tamer Shafik, Deputy Commercial Director at Orascom Construction Industries (OCI).
Four banks participated in the pool: National Société Générale Bank SAE (NSGB), Commercial International Bank (CIB) Egypt SAE, Arab African International Bank SAE and Ahli United Bank (Egypt) SAE. NSGB acted as agent bank and CIB as custodian.Baker & McKenzie is the project's legal advisor.
The highly sought after GWI awards are acknowledged as the top distinctions in the water industry worldwide. In 2007, Aqualia was also named 'Water Company of the Year' by GWI.
The New Cairo plant, which will process sewage from over one million people, is Aqualia's first contract in Egypt and is another step in the company's international expansion drive, which is focused particularly on North Africa, an area where Aqualia is already building two of the continent's largest desalination plants, in Mostaganem and Cap Djinet (both in Algeria). In the Middle East, the company has opened a business development office in the United Arab Emirates; it has projects under way in the UAE, as well as Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and Saudi Arabia, where there are prospects for major business opportunities in the coming years.
Aqualia (www.aqualia.es) is the water subsidiary of Spanish-domiciled Fomento de Construcciones y Contratas (FCC), one of Europe's leading citizen services companies. (www.fcc.es) Aqualia is the third-largest water company in the world and operates in over 1,100 municipalities worldwide, serving over 27 million people. Aqualia has a backlog of 12.2 billion euro, 30% of which comes from activities outside Spain. It currently operates in 14 countries, including Portugal, the Czech Republic, Italy, Egypt, Algeria, China, and Mexico. Aqualia responds to the needs of all parties, private and public, at all stages of the water cycle, providing water for human, industrial, and agricultural uses.
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For further information, please contact:
Maria Ramos
Tel: +44 (0) 75 2222 33 41
maria.ramos@doubleic.com
© Press Release 2010
