Offers on Algeria’s Great Mosque starts on Sunday

Offers to select companies to construct Algeria’s Great Mosque will be open on Sunday and the final delivery of the project will be done by 2014, said the national agency of constructing and managing the mosque.

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  More than 20 world corporations participated in the call for tender. Of them, there are companies from Algeria, South Korea, France, Germany, China, Iran and Japan. Offers from many international companies were accepted.

   

  The agency’s general director told Echorouk the idea of the mosque appeared in 1963. It consisted in building a big mosque with Islamic decoration. A well-known Brazilian architect had presented a plan for it and it was supposed to be constructed in the centre of Algiers. Yet, the project was delayed because of the lack of resources. In 1985, the Algerian religious affairs minister decided to deal with the project once again. Yet, the 1986 financial crisis and the fall of oil prices postponed it until 2004. President Bouteflika decided to launch the project, stressing the necessity of re-conducting architectural and technical studies.