The Iraqi cabinet has asked the country’s National Investment Commission (NIC) to press ahead with a contract with Dubai’s Emaar Properties and Abu Dhabi’s Eagle Hills for the huge Al-Rashid City project planned for Baghdad.

The city, which is expected to contain up to 64,000 new homes, has previously been estimated by Iraqi officials to have an investment value of about $10 billion.

In a statement carried on its official website last week, the cabinet secretariat said: “The cabinet has agreed that NIC will complete contractual procedures for Al-Rashid City project with Emaar and Eagle Hills and award them the project after reaching agreement on the final form of the contract, in line with NIC requirements.”

Under the agreement, “the investors Emaar and Eagle Hills” will bear maintenance costs and sell housing units in the project, the statement added.

Emaar Properties told Thomson Reuters Projects that the company will make appropriate disclosures when the agreements are finalised.

“We discuss a number of developments on regular basis. We will make appropriate disclosures when we finalise the agreements,” an Emaar spokesperson said in an emailed statement on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Iraq’s Al-Iqtisad News network reported on Tuesday that work on the project is expected to start this year.

“The contract with Emaar and Eagle Hills provides for the construction of 64,000 houses in Al-Rashid City along with shopping and services facilities…the project will be completed with(in) a few years," the report said, quoting Saad Al-Hadeethi, a spokesman for the Iraqi Prime Minister.

(Reporting by Nadim Kawach; additional reporting by Anoop Menon; Editing by Michael Fahy)

(anoop.menon@thomsonreuters.com)

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