Al Mal to bid for Tunisia project

Kuwait's Al Mal Investment Company, a firm controlled by the family-owned conglomerate Kharafi Group, will bid for a multi-billion dollar project in Tunisia, a company executive said.

The firm was qualified by the Tunisian government to submit a bid to build a port under the build, operate and transfer (BOT) system that could cost euro1.4 billion ($2.22 billion), Managing Director Fawzy Al Jouder told Al Watan newspaper. The firm is also studying investing in infrastructure projects in Kuwait worth more than 100 million dinars ($377.2 million) and is eyeing overseas investments of more than $200 million in the power sector, said Jouder.

"The company is currently studying projects in other sectors and in different geographical locations in infrastructure, power, health, and telecommunications sectors," he told the paper. "In the health sector for instance, we have a project in the Gulf for which we started marketing... where its total cost exceeds $900 million."

Mal will sell assets worth 20 million dinars in Kuwait and abroad in the coming period to finance its expansion, he told Watan. Shares of Al Mal are down almost 9 per cent this year.