CAIRO — The governor of South Sinai, Khaled Fouda, and the chairman of the Red Sea Ports Authority, Khaled Zahran, inspected the construction site of the yacht harbor project in Dahab on the southeast coast of the Sinai Peninsula Dec. 6.

Fouda stressed in a press statement the importance of the project as the harbor constitutes a maritime connection route between the Saudi city of Makna in Tabuk province and the Egyptian city of Dahab in South Sinai, with easy, speedy and safety of movement between the two cities.

Fouda added that the project’s main objective is to activate tourism in Dahab, turn the city into the first tourism crossing with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries, and revitalize tourism in Sinai. The project will also contribute to revitalizing tourism with Tabuk, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, and to mainly reviving yachting tourism with the Gulf countries as a part of Arab tourism to Egypt. This is added to boosting tourism transport activities.

The Red Sea Ports Authority had proposed in 2017 the project to build a yachting harbor over an area of ​​45,000 square meters in Dahab with a cost of 70 million Egyptian pounds ($4.4 million), and with $40 million in investments. The project includes building a 300-meter-long and three to five meters deep marine scaffold, an administrative building of 600 square meters, and infrastructure networks (electricity, water, sewage treatment plant and seawater desalination plant). A contract was signed by Saudi investors and the Dahab Businessmen Association to connect Tabuk to Dahab with the aim to support and boost tourism in South Sinai and operate regular tourism lines between the two cities. This is added to encouraging commercial and real estate investment opportunities in South Sinai and yachting tourism in the Arab Gulf states.