www.bahraintribune.com Kuwait has become the first Arab country to invest in south Sudan, a region roughly the size of Texas ravaged by more than two decades of conflict with the north.
The Kuwaiti ambassador in Khartoum, Munzir Al Issa, accompanied a delegation of Kuwaiti investors to Juba to inaugurate a project to upgrade the town’s Nile river port to the tune of $70 million.
They also inaugurated a second project to build a five-star hotel in Juba, expected to be the first in the region, at an estimated cost of $40 million, and a 10-million-dollar fisheries industry.
“We are happy to note that Kuwait was the first country to have come in to assist the south after the end of the first civil war in 1972 and is now the first country to do the same after the end of the second civil war,” the president of south Sudan, Salva Kiir, told the Kuwaitis.
Kuwait was the only Arab country with a liaison office in Juba before the war through which it funded the construction of the only nongovernmental housing estate in the town and the Al Sabah children’s hospital.
The residents of Juba came out in force to attend the grand ceremony held to launch the projects and express gratitude to the business delegation headed by Ma’az Al Fihayed, president of Sukait, the joint Kuwaiti-Sudanese company undertaking the investment.
“We are here to revive decades of friendship with Juba that was initiated by our late ambassador Abdullah Al Suraya, who loved this town very much, visited it many times and built a number of public utilities, including Al-Sabah General Hospital in the early 1970s,” Fihayed told the crowd.
Sukait said it expected the port project to be completed in two years and serve a useful purpose connecting villages along the Nile and in the repatriation of millions of people displaced by the war.
It added it would collect 95 per cent of revenues from the project, launched on a Build Operate Transfer (BOT) basis, with the five percent going to host, Bahr Al Jebel state, which will take full control after 30 years.
Fihayed said the hotel would be completed in 18 months. The fishing project, said the company, will be fully operational within 10 months.
There are almost no roads connecting the south with the rest of the country and neighboring nations, and in most cases, the few available are either still mined or usable only during the dry season.
Clean water and electricity are virtually non-existent in much of the south Sudan, which has had no investments or business in decades to generate job opportunities for its people, the majority of whom live from hand to mouth.
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