Construction giant sees more payments in Q2

MEYDAN PLAN: Arabtec has said its dispute with racecourse developer Meydan will be resolved

Arabtec Construction was paid for completed work by contractors more readily in the second quarter of the year than in the first, CFO Ziad Makhzoumi said on Tuesday.

He added that the company would also soon sit down with Dubai-based racecourse developers Meydan to resolve a payment dispute believed to be in the region of $450m.

“We are being paid. We are collecting. Not as fast and as well as we did a year ago, but we are collecting. And we have paid a lot of our suppliers in the last quarter. More than we did in the previous quarter. There is collection, but we are not in the same comfortable position that we were a year ago where we had a lot of cash in the bank. We are doing ok.

"I think most companies are facing the same situation. This has changed in the last three months. At the beginning of the year, the situation was worse. Collections are better now, and the government and its entities are paying.”

Makhzoumi said the dispute with racecourse developers Meydan would hopefully soon be resolved “amicably".

“On Meydan, there has been a misunderstanding, and it is being resolved amicably soon...Amicably means, you know, we have finished some work and we need to be compensated for it. So we are in the process of resolving any misunderstanding.

"Their decision to terminate the contract was based on us possibly not completing the project on the schedule that they would have liked us to adhere to, which was not in the contract. So we went our separate ways. But I think it will be resolved.”

Arabtec Construction is the biggest construction and engineering company in the Middle East, and employs 70,000 people, 46,000 of whom are employed in the UAE.

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