Cairo Opera to donate funds to Suez Canal corridor

Egypt picks consortium for Suez corridor masterplan

The Cairo Opera House has announced that it will donate funds from a series of monthly concerts to the “Long Live Egypt” project to revitalise the Egyptian economy and in particular to the new Suez Canal Corridor project.

The country's president Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi initiated the patriotic "Long Live Egypt" fund in June as a way of supporting the failing Egyptian economy.

The head of the opera house has asked all Arab and Egyptian artists performing at these concerts to donate their fees to the fund.

The new Suez Canal corridor provides for the construction of second waterway alongside the first. The project includes a new seaport at Port Said and a technological zone at Ismailia. The ambitious $4 billion project also forsees residential and agricultural developments along the new waterway and three new tunnels – two for road traffic and one for a railway – to link both banks of the canal zone.

The contract for the $1.8 billion masterplan for the project has been awarded to the Bahraini-based Dar Al-Handasah, part of the Dar Group, and its Egyptian partners. The consortium was chosen out of 14 international firms bidding for the contract.

Dar Al-Handasah, which was founded in Beirut in 1956, was involved in the reconstruction of central Beirut after the end of the Lebanese civil war, Cairo airport's third terminal and the King Abdullah financial district in Riyadh. One of the Dar Group's most recent projects has been the design for the 2022 World Cup Al Bayt stadium in Qatar.

The Egyptian army was given a three-year deadline to dig the new waterway but President Sisi has now ordered that it should be finished in a year.