At the end of last year, the company announced that it was investing $467mn to build a shopping mall in Oman. Built on 157,000m2 of land on the site of the new Oman Convention and Exhibition Centre in Muscat, Mall of Oman will have 350 stores including a Carrefour hypermarket and a cinema/family entertainment complex.

The project will be Oman’s largest shopping mall and is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2017.

This news was soon followed in January when it said that MAF will expand one of its shopping malls in Cairo’s Maadi district at a cost of $5.2bn, and begin construction of another mall next to Cairo’s main airport at a similar amount cost. The company is also expected to complete construction of its Mall of Egypt project near Cairo by the end of 2015 at a cost of $8.1bn.

Notwithstanding these grand plans, George Kostas, Majid Al Futtaim Properties CEO, told Construction Week in February that it will place a greater emphasis on smaller shopping malls in the future.

Kostas said: “It is getting harder, cities are developing and getting built out, so getting the right place is more challenging, but there is enormous opportunity for us.”