The New and Renewable Energy Authority (NREA) plans to finalize a number of energy purchasing Feed-in-Tariff (FiT) projects in the first quarter of 2017, reported Daily News Egypt.

NREA’s interim Chairperson, Mohamed Mousa Omran, stated that NREA will give priority to delayed projects adding that NREA approved requests made by a number of solar companies in order to transfer the lands of the FiT from Minya to Benban.

NREA is giving priority to existing projects in order to attract newer ventures. Additionally, NREA is concentrating on operation and maintenance, implementing principles of governance, and regulation.

Furthermore, NREA launched a tender that aims to establish a 20MW solar power plant in Kom Ombo in cooperation with the Agence Française de Développement (AFD). Moreover, it secured a loan of $90m from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in order to establish another solar power plant in Hurghada to produce 20MW of electricity. The Hurghada plant would be the fifth station of its kind in Egypt and it is expected to start operations by March.

Omran added that NREA supports investors of the FiT projects in phase I and phase II. He added that nine companies signed the power purchasing agreement under the terms of the first phase.