By Shane McGinley
UAE real estate firm Tasweek Real Estate Development and Marketing is to start construction next year on two major projects in Morocco, the company’s CEO has revealed.
“We are expanding into Morocco… We have signed agreements with some operators and that project will be one of our key markets,” Masood Al Awar, CEO of Tasweek, said in an interview with Arabian Business in Dubai.
“We have already the approvals to do a healthcare city… The components are there, residential, hospitality and a hospital… It will be in Marrakesh,” he added.
The US$40m Marrakech Health Care City will be around 21,000 sqm in size and will include a 160-bed private hospital, a 40-room boutique hotel and 56 residential apartments.
Al Awar said construction will start in the next three to six months and will take around two years to complete.
In addition Tasweek is also developing a US$20m golf residential complex which will have 96 apartments on a 35,000 sqm plot of land.
Further details of the two Marrakesh projects will be announced at a press conference in a few weeks.
While previously operating as a financier or joint partner, Tasweek has increasingly moved into the development sector and earlier this year it announced it had signed a joint venture agreement to develop, own, operate and market luxury properties in Malaysia.
The deal was with Casabrina Vacation Villas and, under the terms of the venture, Tasweek will market nine boutique Villa hotels under a Shariah-compliant scheme.
The villas are spread over 30 acres of hillside land surrounded by a 130m-year old virgin rainforest just under an hour’s drive from the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur.
Upon completion, the complex will comprise eleven exclusive six and eight-bedroom suites nested at the foothills of Bukit Frasier in Pahang, the largest state in West Malaysia.
The project is due to start handover at the end of next year and it is now 95 percent sold out, Al Awar claimed. “It is a very good result. The project value is around US$86m and [financing] is completed now.”
Al Awar also said the company was looking to Saudi Arabia as a growing market. “We are at the moment trying to establish our contact and in the next two quarters for sure we will confirm our joint venture and start…. [Saudi Arabia] is a huge market and has an organic market and the real estate components are very attractive,” he said.
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