By Xinhua,
Amman : Jordan is to launch a long-awaited multimillion-U.S.-dollar water conveyance project to soothe the water shortage in capital Amman in August, local daily Jordan Times quoted Ministry of Water and Irrigation officials on Sunday.
The Disi Water Conveyance Project, seeking to provide 100 million cubic meters of water annually to Amman via a 325 km pipeline running from the fossil Disi Aquifer on Jordan’s border with Saudi Arabia to Amman, and to be established on a Build-Operate-Transfer basis, had its implementation previously scheduled for July 2007.
However, GAMA, the Turkish company that won the bid last September, proposed to modify the water price and the total cost amid sharp increase in steel and energy prices.
Under the modifications, the estimated cost of the project rose from 622 million Jordanian dinars (about 879 million U.S. dollars) to 702 million dinars (about 992 million dollars), while the waterprice of water went up from 850 fils (about 1.20 dollars) per cubic meter to 872.5 fils (about 1.23 dollars).
Jordan is one of the 10 most water-deprived countries in the world. The country announced a civil nuclear energy program in January 2007, seeking for nuclear energy to desalinate sea water and generate electricity. (1 Jordanian dinar = 1,000 fils)(1 dollar= 0.708 Jordanian dinar)