Egyptian multi-millionaire businessman, Naguib Sawiris, has recently bought land on the southern coast of the Jordanian Red Sea resort of Aqaba, Jordan's Al-Arab al-Yawm newspaper reported Wednesday.
Sawiris bought 300 dunums to build a tourist village, including hotels, restaurants and leisure parks, the daily said quoting unnamed sources.
The scheme is expected to cost 1.8 billion dinars (around 2.5 billion dollars), the newspaper said.
Sawiris, a Coptic Christian, along with his father Unsi and his brother Samih, controls Orascom, a huge empire dealing in mobile phones, film production, tourism, information technology, a brewery and a winery as well as building and public works inside and outside Egypt.
In June, he visited Jordan and was received by King Abdullah II to discuss the project in Aqaba, which the monarch wants to develop and turn into a special economic zone to attract foreign investments.
At the time Sawiris' Jordanian partner, Rauf Abu Jaber of the Abu Jaber Investment Company, said an agreement had been concluded with the Aqaba Region Authority and the project could take three years to be completed.
The Jordanian press quoted King Abdullah as voicing support for the scheme.
Sawiris already owns a 65 percent stake in Jordan's first mobile phone company, Fast Link, as part of his financial empire, which also includes a five-star tourist village on Egypt's Red Sea coast - AMMAN (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
