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Article: Policy shift threatens upgrade plans: Algiers will have to reconsider its strategy of taking a majority stake in all future petrochemicals projects involving foreign partners if it is to attract the investment it needs into the sector.(ALGERIA)
- Article from:
- MEED Middle East Economic Digest
- Article date:
- December 12, 2008
- Author:
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To say that Algeria's petrochemicals programme has been slow to take shape is an understatement. Last year, Algeria signed contracts for its first new petrochemicals facilities in 18 years, since a joint venture agreement was signed to build a polyethylene plant in 1990.
But local bureaucracy and disagreements over how to finance the two new projects--an ethane cracker and a methanol plant--mean that progress on the schemes has stalled.
A raft of other major petrochemicals projects, proposed in 2005, are still to be awarded and the government's announcement in the summer of 2008 that from now it will take a majority stake in all projects with ...