Dubai Holding has said that it expects construction work to start on its 48 million square foot Mall of The World project during the first quarter of 2015.
The government-owned company said that consultants for the mega-project were already in the process of being appointed, with a view to starting on site in the first quarter of 2015. It is expected to take three years to complete.
It unveiled details of the timetable for the $6.8 billion project – set to contain a theme park, the world’s biggest mall, 100 hotels and a theatre district, after revealing financial figures for its Commercial Operations Group (DHCOG) for the first half of 2014.
The business, which owns the Dubai Properties Group, the Tecom Investments business park arm and the Jumeirah hospitality group, said that sales in the first half of the year were $1.5 billion and its net profit was $571.8 million.
DHCOG said that it had experienced a ‘strong’ performance across all of its business lines, with Tecom Investments working on the development of Dubai Design District, where it issued licences to more than 140 new companies. It also launched the twin-towered Butterfly development containing 255,000ft2 of retail and commercial space in Al Sufouh, and a new dedicated Halal Cluster for food production firms at Dubai Industrial City.
Dubai Properties Group launched 800 new apartments into the market at locations including the creekside Cultural Village complex and at Dubailand. It also began an upgrade of The Walk at JBR and teamed up with Tecom to encourage investments from locals into three- and four-star hotel projects.
Commenting on the firm’s results, Dubai Holding chairman HE Mohammad Abdulla Al Gergawi, said: “Our ability to continue to generate solid earnings highlights both the strength of our financial position and the success of our strategy that is focused on investing in sectors vital to Dubai’s economic development.
“We are confident that our financial position will strengthen further once construction starts in the strategic projects we announced recently.”
Ahmad Bin Byat, CEO of Dubai Holding, added: “We are confident that our performance will continue to improve over the second half of the year and we expect our annual net profits to exceed AED4 billion ($1.09 billion).”
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