The Basra Investment Commission – Iraq announced, on Wednesday (May 5, 2021) the inclusion of mega projects in the current year’s plan, the most prominent of which is the implementation of a large iron and steel factory, and the first industrial city to help employ thousands of unemployed.

The semi-official Al-Sabah newspaper quoted the head of the commission, Alaa Abdul-Hussein Salman, as saying that “the plan for the current year includes the establishment of giant investment projects, the most prominent of which is an iron and steel factory with a design capacity of more than one million tons of reinforcing and industrial steel.”

He added, “The plan also includes residential, industrial, recreational and hotel projects whose construction cost is estimated at hundreds of millions of dollars,” noting “the completion of almost all sectoral approvals in coordination with the Basra local administration in preparation for signing the investment licenses.”

Salman pointed to “completing government departments’ approvals to establish the first major industrial city by preserving an area of ​​one thousand dunams, as it was planned to accommodate a large number of industrial, petrochemical investment projects and projects for the iron and steel and electronic industries, and to provide thousands of job opportunities for the unemployed, graduates, middle, technical and service groups.”

He stated that “the location of the industrial city was chosen near the sources of oil and gas wealth, ports and highways, which would help investors to export the surplus to global markets and reduce the cost of imported and local raw materials that enter the production process.”