An interview with Ranhill president and Chief Executive Officer Tan Sri Hamdan Mohamad Please give an update on your contract to build apartments in Libya?   It is a housing project where we would build 40,000 units of two-storey and four-storey apartments at three locations. The project is valued at US$2.4bil, but the design has somewhat changed as the client wanted an upgrade on the quality, size of apartments and a basement car park.  We are finalising the revised pricing and will make the necessary announcement soon. The first phase involves a block of 10,000 units to be built in the suburb of Tajura, which is 15km from Tripoli .It is a new township and we have begun the earthworks. Is Ranhill assured of the payment from the Libyan project?   Libya is a rich country and all the big boys of the energy and construction sectors are operating there. Doing business in Libya is good. For the job, we got a 13% advance payment and the rest is via progress payments that are claimed against an irrevocable revolving letter of credit. Just to secure the job, we had to compete with Chinese and Turkish contractors. It feels really good to have won the contract.

Libya plans to build a pilot city near the mausoleum of the Libyan martyr, Omar Mokhtar, in the north eastern town of Seloug, officials said. Engineers in charge of implementing the pilot city project, which will be built on an area of 681 hectares, have indicated that it will comprise 5,000 houses, including 3,928 villas and 34 four-storey buildings. The project will also include public service buildings, notably crèches, basic, secondary and vocational schools, health assistance units, a hospital, a university, a conference centre, a sporting club, community halls, a post office, a market, an administrative complex, a central library, a popular security centre, a civil protection station and a petrol station. Streets, sanitation, communication, electric power, water and gas facilities are also part of the project. The building works entrusted to the South Korean company "Hyundai" will start in September 2007 and 2,000 houses will be completed by the 40th anniversary of the 1st September Revolution in 2009. Land clearing, which concern also the promotion and improvement of Omar Mokhtar's mausoleum, have already started. The secretary of the Libyan People's General Committee for Housing has, on that occasion, indicated that the promotion works in the area, where the mausoleum is located, consist in the building of a museum on the Libyan Jihad, especially that of the oldest Martyr and epitomising sufferings endured by Libyans in the concentration camps in the Italian colonial rule. He has also said that the pilot city's housing project has been designed in accordance with the specimen of the Libyan house, which matches the country's culture and social life.