Cyprus-owned FiberPro clinches multi-billion housing deal in Iraq

– More projects, airport, hotel, hospital underway
– Iraq has need for 4 mln new homes
– Plans to convert Saddam palaces to tourist resorts

FiberPro Group, a Dubai-based contracting company with operations in the UAE, Cyprus and Greece, has clinched a multi-billion deal for the construction of 30,000 houses in Iraq.
The Cypriot owners of the company, its Managing Director Fotis Athanassiou and businessman Demetris Takoushis of Larnaca, are currently in Baghdad where they are preparing the ground for the start of the project some time in the second quarter of this year.
The housing development will cost some 1.5 bln dollars to build and is being funded by an international consortium of banks with Iraqi state guarantees, primarily from the country’s Investments Authority.
“We have been working on this deal for nearly two years, under extremely difficult conditions,” Athanassiou told the Financial Mirror in a telephone interview.
“The same team that helped us develop the Atlantis Hotel project in Dubai is now working on the Iraq contract,” he added.
Takoushis said that the prospects for further deals in Iraq are “huge”.
“The country is only now recovering from the war that has destroyed everything. There is a need for at least 4 mln new homes to be built,” he said, indicating that there are other “multi-billion” projects in the pipeline.
“New developments for which there is great demand include infrastructure projects such as airports, hotels and hospitals,” Takoushis said, adding that FiberPro is also advising the Iraqi government on how to best utilise the old palaces of Saddam Hussein, by converting some of them to tourist attractions or resorts.
He said that FiberPro is already in touch with many other Dubai-based companies from Europe or America in order to sub-contract parts of the construction of the project and that other deals may be announced soon.