Malaysia's WCT Engineering and its UAE partner, Arabtec Holding, have yet to win a deal to build a horse-racing course in Dubai, Arabtec said.

The Edge weekly reported on Saturday that a WCT joint venture with Arabtec would build the 4.5 billion ringgit ($1.29 billion) racecourse at Meydan to replace the one at Nad al-Sheba, home of the Dubai World Cup.

"The Arabtec-WCT joint venture announced that as of today, the Meydan Dubai race course project has not been awarded to them," Arabtec, the largest UAE developer by market value, said in a statement.

Dubai is the second largest member of the oil-exporting UAE federation.

Arabtec's deputy chief executive Nabil Hamdan declined to comment on whether the two companies were bidding for the contract.

Their joint venture won a $140 million drainage and sewerage system deal in Dubai earlier this year and would sign two to three similar contracts by the end of 2008, managing director Riad Kamal said in April.

WCT Engineering has built Formula 1 race tracks in Malaysia and Bahrain and is developing another circuit in Abu Dhabi, the UAE's capital. - Reuters