CAIRO: The cost of the King Salman Bridge, which will be built over the Red Sea connecting Saudi Arabia and Egypt, will be recovered within 10 years, a former Egyptian minister has said.
“I inspected the location of the bridge in Oct. 2013, and it will take about three years to complete the project. The bridge will play a very important role in boosting trade in the region, and it won’t take more than 10 years to recover the cost,” Ibrahim Al-Dimitri, former deputy transport minister, was quoted as saying by local media on Sunday.
According to studies, he said, the bridge will take three years to be completed with a cost of $3 billion to $4 billion. “The bridge will increase of Gulf investment opportunities in Egypt and also bolster commercial exchange between Arab countries.”
The bridge will cut travel time between the Kingdom and Egypt to 30 minutes and is considered as the first link between Africa and Asia.
The best way to implement the project is by forming a mutual alliance between the Kingdom and Egypt. The technical committee will start preparing for the project and supervise its future operations.
The committee will define whether the project will be financed by the two countries or through the Build-Operate-Transfer (BoT) system, in which private parties are involved.
Details about where the bridge would be built have not been made available so far, but the likeliest site is said to be shortest distance between the two countries at about 16 kilometers, from Ras Alsheikh Hamid in Tabuk on the Saudi side and Nabq, north of Sharm el-Sheikh, in Egypt.
