Italians to build Iraq's largest port

Iraq's Port

The importance of foreign direct investment (FDI) to Iraq's economic recovery cannot be understated. Left to its own devices and the war-torn country would struggle to balance its need for socio-economic state investment.

That's why the news an Italian group will begin construction in a month's time on what will become Iraq's largest shipping port has given the government reason to be optimistic.

Iraqi transport minister Amer Abduljabbar insists that the Fao port project will allow for the transport of goods between the northern and southern hemisphere to be conducted "quickly, cheaply and safely". The facility at Fao, at the southernmost point of the country, will be fed by a new rail line linking it to the Turkish border in the north, dramatically improving Iraq's moribund transport infrastructure.

The massive 100-dock facility will eventually have an annual capacity of 99 million tonnes.

Competing with Suez

"Fao, which will be built by an Italian consortium, will be the biggest port in Iraq," Transport Minister Amer Abduljabbar Ismail said in a ceremony at Fao on the Gulf, 535 km (335 miles) south of Baghdad.

"This project is part of a larger vision that we call a 'dry canal' which will allow for transport of goods between the north and the south of the world quickly, cheaply and safely."

As yet the names of the Italian firms have not been disclosed, which suggests that the deal is yet to be finalised, but if completed the US$4.6 billion project will be the biggest infrastructure project in Iraq in 30 years.

The Iraqi government is so confident about the project that they hope to eventually compete with the Suez Canal in the transporting of goods, which connects the Red Sea and the Mediterranean and through which more than 14,000 ships passed in 2009.

The canal could eventually prove one of the biggest factors, along with the Iraq's auctioned oil fields, in the nation's future economic security.

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Daniel Jones

Daniel is a Politics and Philosophy graduate from Cardiff University where he also worked as a section editor on the award winning student newspaper. After university he joined an IT support company where he was a B2B online writer. He loves anything to do with sport and joined GDS in July 2009.

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