Syria selected Mitsui & Co of Japan and 15 other companies and groups to bid this month for a contract to build and operate the country’s first privately owned power plant, an Electricity Ministry official said. The Nasserieh plant, to be located northeast of the capital Damascus, will have a capacity of 180 to 250 megawatts, Khaled Homsi, head of the ministry’s public-private partnership unit, said in written comments yesterday.
Syria is encouraging the development of private businesses in its state-dominated economy, and President Bashar al-Assad issued an energy law on November 14 enabling foreign and local private investors to generate and distribute electricity. Syria’s demand for power stood at 44.5 billion kilowatts in 2009, up 5.9 percent from the previous year, according to figures from the state-run Public Establishment for Electrical Generation and Transfer. Power supply reached 43.3 billion kilowatts last year, an increase of 5.6 percent from 2008.
Among the pre-qualified bidders for the project are: GEK Terna SA of Greece; Finland’s Waertsilae Oyj; Powertek Bhd of Malaysia; Iran’s state-owned Mapna International; Evonik Steag GmbH of Germany; a group including MMC Corp of Malaysia; and Saudi Arabia’s water and power company Acwa Holding, Homsi said. Other bidders include Tenaga Nasional Bhd of Malaysia, London-based International Power Plc and Mytilineos Holdings SA of Greece.