Iraq’s cabinet agreed to award Turkey’s UB Holding a project to rehabilitate a steel plant in the south of the Persian Gulf country, according to an official at the Iraqi Ministry of Industry and Minerals.

The government will sign the contract with UB Holding within a month, Amer Abdel Razzaq, deputy director general of the ministry’s investment department, said in a telephone interview in Baghdad today.

UB Holding will spend about $500 million for the first phase of the rehabilitation plan of the steel plant in the province of Basra, Abdel Razzaq said in a June 19 interview.

To contact the reporter on this story: Khalid Al-Ansary in Dubai at kalansary@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Stephen Voss at sev@bloomberg.net