Egypt’s Minister of Investment Ashraf Salman has announced that Egypt will its plan for the country’s new capital city within weeks. According to The National, a UAE-based newspaper, Salman said the city’s plans will be revealed at Egypt’s economic conference that will be held in Sharm El Sheikh in March. “We’re talking a very big city. It is just the size of New Cairo itself … It is the ‘new New Cairo’,” said the Minister to The National. The Minister added that the city, which will be 70,000 acres, will take 12 years to build and will be built to the east of Cairo near Ain El-Sokhna. While it is not clear who will be responsible for the construction of the city, reports earlier this week in Bloomberg revealed that UAE’s Emaar is in negotiations with the Egyptian government to build the new capital. Plans to build the new city were first announced by Egypt’s Prime Minister Ibrahim Mehleb in July 2014. Why build a new city The proposed city would aim at transferring Ministries, government buildings and foreign embassies from down-town Cairo to the new capital. According to Prime Minister Mehleb, the new city…
