General Electric has signed a $400 million agreement with Algeria’s Sonelgaz to build a new gas turbine complex in the North African nation.
Reuters are reporting that the complex will start operating in 2017 and will produce six to eight generators and control systems per year with a total capacity of 2,000 megawatts.
A joint venture called General Electric Algeria Turbines (GEAT) will be set up to build and operate the complex in the eastern province of Batna.
“It will be one of the biggest plants of GE in the world. This also shows that foreign investment is returning,” Algeria’s minister for industrial development, Amara Benyounes, told Reuters.
Sonelgaz will hold a 51 percent stake, while GE Industrial France, a subsidiary of GE, will hold the remaining 49 percent.
GE has invested in the past in Algeria, winning a $2 billion deal with Sonelgaz to supply turbines just last year. But other investors, especially in the non-energy sector remain more wary, concerned about restrictions and state bureaucracy.
Algerian law limits to 49 percent the stake a foreign firm can hold in any investment, which is seen by analysts as a hurdle to overseas capital flow into the OPEC oil-producing North African country.
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