Al Habtoor Leighton Group to expansion Construction firms in Kuwait, Oman

Dubai: Dubai-based Al Habtoor Leighton Group is eyeing expansion into Kuwait, Oman and Libya this year shifting its focus from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and sees its order book rising 36 percent over 12 months.

Construction firms have been rapidly expanding operations outside the UAE, where house prices in Dubai.

They are already well established in Qatar so that's probably going to be the easiest (area) for us to expand into.

Al Habtoor's total order book is expected to rise to around 30 billion dirhams ($8.17 billion) over the next 12 months from around 22 billion dirhams.

The firm expects to hear whether it has won a contract worth around $500 million for the Kuwait airport runway development in the next three to four weeks, Voyer .

In Abu Dhabi, the firm is shifting from focussing on high rise residential and hotel projects to hospitals, educational facilities and road and civil infrastructure, and the business would continue to move towards a 50-50 split between the two.

Its projects include the $1.8 billion St Regis Hotel and the $1.4 billion Khalifa Port projects in Abu Dhabi, and it won its first project in Saudi Arabia last year.