Egypt Will Announce Winner for Coal-Fired Power Plant, Next Week

Egypt next week will announce the winning consortium to build a 6,000 megawatt coal-fired power plant in the Red Sea port of Hamrawein after having received bids from three international consortiums, the electricity minister said.

Egypt is looking to expend electricity production after acute shortages in the years immediately following its 2011 uprising led to frequent summer blackouts and cuts to industrial production.

The minister, Mohamed Shaker, said in a statement that the lowest bid received was for $4.4 billion from a Chinese consortium that includes Shanghai Electric and Dongfang Electric.

A U.S. consortium led by General Electric made a bid for $5.2 billion, and a Japanese-Egyptian consortium that includes Mitsubishi-Hitachi Power Systems, Toyota Tsusho Corp as well as Egypt’s Orascom Construction and El Sewedy Electric made a bid for $6.19 billion.

Shaker said the winner would be chosen according to the average price of electricity production during the lifetime of the project.