BAGHDAD, March 30, (RTRS): Iraq has doubled its goal of building 500,000 housing units after international companies showed a healthy appetite to win the construction contracts, the chairman of Iraq’s National Investment Commission said.
As a result the war-shattered nation is looking for bidders to build 1 million new units, valued at an average of $50,000 each, for a total value of $50 billion.
Iraq’s growing population faces an acute shortage of homes after years of war and sanctions. The government, which hopes to build the 1 million new homes within three years, estimates it will need about 2 million new units in the next five years.
“When we saw the huge interest by giant firms ... this made us seize the opportunity instead of 500,000 to reach for 1 million,” investment commission chairman Sami al-Araji told Reuters in an interview on Monday.
More than 100 firms showed interest in the ambitious project including American, Emirati, Chinese, Turkish and Canadian companies, he said.
Araji said his commission has concluded negotiations with Canadian firm Traugott Building Contractors to build 100,000 units in six provinces and will sign a contract “as soon as possible”.
“We are planning in the next three months to hold discussions with all the companies and when we reach the stage of understanding with any company, we will sign a contract with it immediately,” Araji said.

Construction has been hampered by red tape and security concerns since the 2003 U.S. invasion. The government hopes a sharp fall in violence in the last two years and a new investment law allowing foreigners to own land for housing projects will entice foreign developers.
Araji said the government had set up favourable terms to lure construction companies.
“We will bring the land and bring them the buyer, and we will participate in funding the project. They will not risk any money, they will finish the work and they will sell it (the housing unit) to a company which we will establish,” Araji said.
Iraq signed up global oil companies last year to develop its rich oilfields and hopes to put its petroleum income to work rebuilding the country.
In January the city of Baghdad announced it was looking for planners and builders for a project for 75,000 apartments in the Sadr City slum.
City officials said they had also signed a contract with an Emirati investment firm for a $15 billion housing project in eastern Baghdad, including 65,000 housing units on 5,000 acres (2,000 hectares) of land.

Also:
BAGHDAD: Unlisted Leedco Engineers Inc has won a $50 million contract for construction of an international airport in Iraq, company and provincial officials said on Monday.
The airport is to be built in Salahuddine Province in northern Iraq as an alternative to Baghdad International Airport, said Jewher Hamad al-Fahel, the head of the province’s investment commission.
Land is to be handed over to the California-based engineering consulting services company in the next few days, he told Reuters.
Hassan Badrelddine, Leedco’s representative in Iraq, said the contract was worth $50 million.
The goal is to have the new airport operational within two years, with initial capacity of 2 million passengers a year. Baghdad International Airport handles about 7 million passengers a year.
Iraq’s Transport Ministry said this month it would invite foreign companies in April to build an international airport in southern Iraq. French airport operator Aeroports de Paris won a $42.5 million contract in November 2009 to work on the plans.

Iraq’s Majnoon oilfield is targeting production of 175,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day in 2012, a senior Royal Dutch Shell executive said on Monday.
Iraq’s largest field is currently pumping at 45,000 boe/d, Shell’s Mounir Bouaziz, Vice-President New Business LNG for the Middle East and North Africa, told an industry event.
Shell and Malaysia’s Petronas signed a final contract to develop Iraq’s Majnoon oilfield, one of the world’s biggest, earlier this year. The eventual output target for the field is 1.8 million boe/d.
Shell and Petronas won the rights in an auction held in Baghdad in December for the field in souther Iraq, estimated to hold 12.6 billion barrels of oil.
The 20-year development contract is one of several deals that Iraq has sealed to try and catapult the country to third place from 11th in the league of oil producing nations.
Bouaziz said the construction of Shell’s Pearl gas-to-liquids project in Qatar is expected to be completed by the end of 2010, with a ramp up in production expected in 2011.
“This will take 12 months,” he said.