Minister of Antiquities “The Grand opening for the Grand Egyptian Museum will be after 40 months from now”

Today at the press conference held at the Giza plateau, Minister State of Antiquities announced the beginning of the third and last phase of the Grand Egyptian Museum at Giza plateau and he announced that the project which was initially supposed to be finish in 2013 will be open for visitors after 40 months from today which means July 2015.

A joint venture between Egypt’s Orascom Construction Industries (OCI) and the Belgian BESIX Group was awarded the contract for this phase (phase 3) of the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) in a deal valued at $810 million which was signed on January 11^th, 2012.

The Minister said “It is a great day in the history of Egypt, Ministry of Antiquities and all the archaeologists to start the last phase of GEM as Egypt’s 21^st century project as the biggest cultural project in the world.”  

Dr. Mohamed Ibrahim referred to the funding which was agreed between the Ministry and the Japanese side represented in Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) to grant the ministry a loan to be paid back after 10 years with 1% interest.

 Photo courtesy: Heneghan Peng Architects

The press conference was attended by Ambassador of Japan in Egypt, Representative from JICA, Secretary General of the supreme Council of Antiquities Dr. Mostafa Amin and Dr. Hussein Basir (The head of the committee supervising the GEM project).