Mauritius’s Indian Ocean Real Estate Co. plans to invest $1.5 billion in a new town on the north- eastern coast of the Indian Ocean island nation, its Chief Executive Officer Murray Adair said.
“The island sits in the middle of a massive emerging market, fromAfrica to Asia,” Murray Adair said in an interview on June 10, in Port Louis, the capital. “It’s a sound place for property development as it’s a safe growing economy.”
Works for the first phase of Haut-Rive, as the project is known, will start in March 2012 and are expected to be completed by the end of 2013, he said. The initial investment will be to 5 billion rupees ($177 million) for 400 residential units and a 5- Star hotel to be managed by Thailand’sCentara Hotels & Resorts. The full project will take 10 years to complete, Adair said.
Indian Ocean Real Estate is an equal partnership between Actis LLP, a London-based private equity company, and Groupe Mon Loisir of Mauritius. GML had assets of 58.3 billion rupees at end of June 2010, its Corporate Communications Manager Aurelie de Crisnay said in an e-mailed response to questions on June 13.
Foreign direct investment in real estate amounted to 18.5 billion rupees from 2006 up to March 2011, the Port Louis-based Bank of Mauritius said on June 10, representing a third of total investment.
Indian Ocean Real Estate has four other commercial and residential projects, with investments reaching 3 billion rupees.