Cairo: Plans to develop a new port in Haifa have been thrown up in the air as competing Israeli construction firms refuse to budge on price, leading to the possibility of a new tender. Tel Aviv has long championed building two new private ports to provide competition to the nation’s state run terminals. When it came to tendering for the two new ports, a Chinese state run engineering firm won on price for both ports, but was only allowed to chose one port to develop, it chose Ashdod. Since then the two Israeli firms left bidding for Haifa have refused to lower their prices to get close to the original winning Chinese price. Local media has suggested that a retender is now imminent for Haifa. [08/09/14]
