Trames d.o.o., a company from the coastal city of Dubrovnik specialising in management and supervision in the construction sector, has been awarded a US$ 200 million contract to design and supervise construction work on a new residential settlement with accompanying facilities in the vicinity of Samarra, a city in the Iraqi province of Salahadin.
An agreement on the project, to be carried out on one million square metres of gross construction area, was signed in Zagreb on Monday by Trames director Marko Balija and the private Iraqi investor Abdulrahman Fadhil Hameed.
At the signing ceremony at the Zagreb Chamber of Commerce, Balija said the project would last around three years and that the residential settlement, called The Pearl of Samarra, along with some 8,500 housing units for about 40,000 residents, would include public buildings such as schools, hospitals, shops, mosques, etc.
Trames will provide management services for the project (design, supervision and engineering), while the Iraqi investor will provide the necessary equipment, materials and labour. Balija said that Trames would be given priority in choosing construction materials, which he said offered big chances for Croatian companies to be contacted by Trames.
Up to 3,000 workers from Croatia could end up in Iraq working on this project.
Balija said Trames was founded in 2001 and had an average annual revenue of 1.2 million euros. The company's business philosophy is based on the one stop shop principle, meaning care for the project from conception to completion.
So far Trames has mostly provided services of consulting, supervision and engineering for several hotels and the city airport in Dubrovnik.
The investor Abdulrahman Fadhil Hameed thanked Croatian diplomats and the authorities of Salahadin province for their assistance, saying that he chose the Croatian company because of the successful operation of Croatian companies in Iraq, which have been present there for more than 65 years.
Hameed said the project amounted to $600 million in total.
The investor and the head of the Croatian House in Arbil, Jasim Daher, called on Croatian companies to participate in the reconstruction of Iraq for which a budget of $110 billion is envisaged for 2012, of which 30 percent is intended for development projects.
Around 20 Croatian companies operate in Iraq, which Daher said was major progress because a few years ago, only a couple of Croatian enterprises were active in Iraq.
Croatia's exports to Iraq in 2010 increased by 428.8 percent to $41.4 million owing to a one-off project. In the first ten months of this year, Croatia-Iraq trade amounted to $10.5 million.
