Dubai Municipality is capable of financing the planned Dh30 billion Desert Rose sustainable city project on its own, an official said yesterday.
The project, located south of Emirates Road, will house 120,000 nationals and 40,000 expatriates by 2025 in so called affordable housing, said Abdullah Rafia, assistant director general at Dubai Municipality.
“We will look into all financing mechanisms that are available and we are open to public private sector kind of cooperation,” said Mr Rafia at Meed’s Destination Dubai conference.
“If we need to do it from our budget it is not a problem for us. We do have an income that we give at the end of the year to the government and if we keep it we can build the city as fast as we want.” Dubai Municipality, a master developer, will start awarding its first contract for consultancy for infrastructure design next month and break ground on the project by the end of this year, he said.
“We are about to award. We have finished with the shortlisting. I expect by early next month [we will award],” said Mr Rafia.
Although the city’s last phase is expected to be built by 2025, Dubai Municipality can speed up the construction to finish it by 2020, he said.
“We are leaving the time scale to the government. If they decide to accelerate, we can do it,” Mr Rafia
“First we start with infrastructure and during the infrastructure [phase] we start designing our houses. We look at how fast we want to go. Then we can start our superstructure construction at the areas where we finish the infrastructure construction.”
The city will cover 4,000 hectares and will include 30,000 housing units, with 20,000 of them dedicated to Emiratis.
Dwellings will be built next to a light electric rail system, which will be connected to Dubai Metro. It will also have 1 million square metres of diverse activities and will include social infrastructure such as schools and hospitals.
The environment-friendly city, in the shape of the desert rose, will reduce the carbon footprint by 300,000 tonnes a year as it will have its own renewable energy plant with an anticipated capacity of 200 megawatts. Solar panels will be installed on all rooftops to produce renewable energy.
Dubai is currently in the midst of a construction boom, having overtaken Abu Dhabi last year in terms of contract awards, according to Meed Projects.
About US$27.8 billion worth of projects were awarded in Dubai last year and this figure is expected to rise to around $30bn this year, despite the oil price drop and an anticipated weakening of the UAE economy, said Ed James, a director at Meed Projects.
dalsaadi@thenational.ae
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