Actual construction work on the proposed Enyimba Economic City (EEC), situated along Aba-PortHarcout expressway, would start in the last quarter of 2023, Darl Uzu, chief executive officer, Crown Realities Plc, has said.
Uzu, who is the private sector lead on the EEC project , made this known Friday in Aba, Abia State on the sidelines of a symposium organised by his friends to mark his 70 years birthday.
EEC is a public private partnership (PPP) initiative between Crown Realities Plc, leading the private sector, Abia State Government and the Federal Government of Nigeria.
Enyimba Economic City is 9.464 hectares of greenfield city with growth sectors in manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, entertainment, education, innovation, commercial, lifestyle, residential and aviation and technology hub .
It is a special economic zone that is planned to connect the nine States in the South-East and South-South zones of Nigeria, with a captive population of about 60 million, into a global business hub.
The concept is to build a global business hub, self sustaining that would integrate Nigeria businesses into a regional and global value chain.
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Uzu said that the project is fully designed, noting that Afreximbank and FirstBank of Nigeria PLC are supporting the debt finance that has gone for first approval, elaborate due diligence with final term sheet signed on March 3, 2023.
The project, which he said is designed in phases, would attract foreign direct investments.
According to him, phase 1 is 1,499 he tries that include first industrial township and logistics that has full origin and destination inland port, which is expected to take off this year.
He said that KPMG has completed the study for the phase 2 medical city, while work is in progress on the hospital company (THC), a consortium of 50 top medical doctors of Nigeria origin in the United States of America (USA) and Europe.
“We have all the kicenses from-Free Trade Zone Development and operating kicenses from Federal Government of Nigeria, through Nigeria Export Processing Zones Authority (NEPZA).
We are building a network operating centre (NOC) initially with Double GDP, a subsidiary of Gitlab in US. Late last year they requested to handover the soft codes to us to continue, which we have. Since then we hay built about 17 sprints that included business registration, security, user account management, gate access, among others.
“We are completing our takeoff camp in Osisioma, Aba that include office and residential complex,” he said.
BusinessDay gathered that AfreximBank is committing a total investment of $150 million in the proposed EEC project, while the Federal Government has handed the management of its 20 percent equity holding in the project to the Sovereign Wealth Fund,
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