AN EGYPTIAN businessman will invest some €220 million in the construction of the Ayia Napa marina, it emerged on Monday.
Naguib Sawiris was received by President Nicos Anastasiades who later tweeted: “We welcome the highly important €220 million investment by Orascom in Ayia Napa.”
Energy and Tourism Minister Giorgos Lakkotrypis said the Egyptian investor had come to an agreement with the consortium that planned to build the marina in the Ayia Thekla area.
“The project is of great importance to Cyprus,” Lakkotrypis said outside the presidential palace.
Work on the marina was expected to start mid-2015.
“It is a project that will enrich our tourist product, in line with the objective of the new strategy,” the minister said.
Sawiris said he had opted to invest in Cyprus “because we believe in this country” which has beautiful beaches.
The Egyptian businessman said he expected the project to be completed in three years. It will include a marina, a luxury hotel, villas and apartments.
He said the aim was to promote Ayia Napa as a top tourist destination.
I share Deanna’s caution. It’s all too zippy-zappy, and will be started and developed in a hurry based on ‘beautiful beaches’ (?), a haven, it seems, for wealthy people’s boats that in itself will do little to increase the coverall tourist traffic in the area,
Ayia Napa is a far-from-completed resort area offering a reasonable, but far from exciting, tourist ‘proposition.
After several ‘false starts’ in comes a wealthy Egyptian to finance a Marina that many of us cannot see will, on its own, help create a well designed integrated resort that tourists will suddenly flock to in greatly increased numbers.
Maybe there’s more than a hint here that Cyprus’ new Big Hope, the Super-Casino, will be connected with all this?.
All announced in an interesting hurry that has even moved the President to start ‘tweeting’!!
Something not quite right about this.
Because we believe in this country†which has beautiful beaches.
Where has this guy been looking. Nearly all the beaches in Cyprus are man made. He needs to go back to his minnows and get them to come back to him again. The only place this man has probably been in Cyprus is the palace and the site in question.
Could he not lend the Larnaca consortium a few million €?