Investors will be soon asked to submit ideas on how to develop a BD1 billion Manama Central Market in Bahrain.

The Manama Municipality and the Manama Municipal Council have agreed that bids should open before the end of this summer so that the project can go ahead as early as 2010.

Bidders will be requested to present feasibility studies on how to run the project and ensure that it reaches the investment target municipal officials are looking at.

The project will turn the area into a business, residential, shopping and leisure city-within-a-city.

Designs include a new BD120 million central market, which will be renamed the Capital Trade Centre.

A model of the project has been set up at the council's meeting hall for investors.

'We still don't know when the bids will be opened. It will be the call of the Tender Board to decide when to start, but hopefully it will be before the summer ends,' said council chairman Majeed Millad Al Jazeeri.

'All I know is that everything is ready and all that we are waiting for are ideas to develop and run the place.

'Of course, everyone will have a different approach. One bidder may want to invest in the whole place and others may enter as a consortium.

'Everything depends on how bids will be assessed, but the most important thing is that the project goes ahead as early as next year.'

The move contradicts earlier comments by council technical committee chairman Hameed Al Basri, who had warned that the credit crunch could stall the project as investors might not be willing to pay out huge sums.

He said some councillors were afraid that the project might not go ahead for at least two years until the world markets stabilised and investors were willing to pump in money.

He wondered why the government had yet to give the go-ahead - more than a year after the project was announced.

Council services and public utilities committee chairman and area councillor Sadiq Rahma wants a public company to be set up to invest in the project, with shares sold to the public.

'This means that instead of making the rich richer by having one individual or a consortium sub-tender the project to other investors and make huge profits, we could open it up for everyone, especially local businessmen.

'Local businessmen will then have the opportunity to invest rather than being ousted by their richer GCC counterparts who would take their place.'

The development comprises four 28-storey office and shopping towers, with the new market taking up the basement and ground floors.

Floors one to six would include car parking and a massive shopping mall, while the remaining 20 in each tower would house offices.

The main development includes four other massive skyscrapers, housing offices and apartments, swimming pools, multi-purpose halls, gyms and other facilities.

It would also feature a five-star hotel, a Green Plaza heritage village and park, and a bus station promising to 'link Bahrain with the world' through Saudi Arabia.

The municipality will own 28 per cent of the Capital Trade Centre, since it owns the land. – TradeArabia News Service