SULAIMANI (ESTA) — Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi laid the foundation stone for the grand Faw port project in Basra on Sunday.
Kadhimi arrived in Basra city early on Sunday to participate in a ceremony to lay the foundation stone of the lucrative Fao project, which South Korea’s Daewoo Engineering and Construction Company implements its construction.
The project includes five berths to unload ships, storage, excavation and furnishing of external navigation channel, tunnel of Khor al-Zubair and a highway linking al-Faw port and Umm Qasr.
In December, the Iraqi government signed a $2.625 billion contract with the Daewoo company to build the first phase of the Grand Faw Port.
The long-planned and repeatedly Grand Faw Port is one of several projects that Iraq hopes will create a shorter transportation corridor between the Middle East and Europe, bypassing the Suez Canal.
The first phase should allow the port to receive three million containers, according to Iraqi authorities. The three construction phases in total should be finished in less than four years and that Iraq was ready to sign contracts with “any interested company” for the other phases.
For now, to receive commodities ships, Iraq has to rely mainly on the port of Umm Qasr in the south of the country, which sits at the top of the strategic Gulf waterway.
The port of Faw will be deeper, allowing it to receive the largest container ships.
