Dubai contractor Arabtec is seeking opportunities in North Africa as it looks to weather a downturn in its home market and is confident it will receive outstanding payments, its chief executive said.

Construction firms are increasingly looking outside Dubai to drive business after a sharp decline in the emirate's property sector led to billions of dollars worth of construction projects being scaled back or cancelled.

'We are not optimistic about picking up sizeable contracts in Dubai,' Riad Kamal said at a meeting with investors and analysts on Thursday.

'We are looking at a couple of projects in Algeria. Between Algeria, Saudi Arabia and Libya ... in the next six months we should be able to divert a lot of our resources, which will become available from the Dubai market.'

Arabtec, which recently started work on its first project in Saudi Arabia, a 1.5 billion Saudi riyal ($400 million) university in Riyadh, has two potential contracts in the kingdom worth 1.5bn riyals and 500 million UAE dirhams respectively, he said, adding the firm hoped to have a backlog of at least 3bn dirhams there by year-end.

Kamal said Arabtec had held talks with quasi-government institutions in Libya about possible projects, but was taking its time.

The UAE's largest contractor by market value envisages more than 50 per cent of its revenues in the next three years coming from outside Dubai.

It is close to securing three new projects in Abu Dhabi worth in total more than 4.5 bn dirhams, Kamal said.

Kamal said Arabtec had outstanding payments of about 3bn dirhams, of which 1.3bn dirhams was for work completed and pending payment. About 80pc was due from the Dubai government or related entities, he said.