Ivory Coast Seeks Housing Partner as It Denies Chinese Deal
Ivory Coast Denies Signing $4 Billion Deal With China Railway
(Bloomberg) -- Ivory Coast’s housing ministry said the country is continuing talks with various parties for the construction of accommodation units after China Railway Construction Corp. said it signed a deal for a development, an agreement which the West African nation denies.
The Chinese infrastructure builder said in a July 2 statement it secured a 2,350 billion CFA francs ($4 billion) contract for the building of 50,000 social-housing units with the state-owned Construction and Real Estate Management Company of Ivory Coast in the commercial capital, Abidjan. The real-estate company, which is known as Sicogi, is fully owned by the government and is under the supervision of the minister of housing construction and urbanism, Bruno Kone.
After the ministry issued a statement on Thursday to deny the existence of a deal with CRCC, the Beijing-based company said in a separate release Friday that the government wasn’t a party to the deal, which it concluded with Sicogi.
Sicogi and the Ivorian government are still in talks with several companies about a housing deal, Firmin Djigbenou, chief of staff at the housing ministry, said on Friday when contacted for comment. “There is no contract with this company,” he said, referring to CRCC.
Sicogi Managing Director Bouake Fofana didn’t answer calls on Friday.
Sicogi and CRCC’s agreement “is real and valid,” the Chinese infrastructure builder said in its statement on Friday.
In May, the two parties were in talks about a possible three-year deal, Ivory Coast’s government said in a statement at the time. The size of the West African nation’s economy is about $40 billion.
--With assistance from Yan Zhang.
To contact the reporter on this story: Katarina Hoije in Abidjan at khoije@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Andre Janse van Vuuren at ajansevanvuu@bloomberg.net, Rene Vollgraaff
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