A consortium of South Korean construction companies will build an eco-friendly $4 billion residential city in Kuwait, the South Korean infrastructure ministry has announced.

Led by Posco A&C and Hyundai Architects and Engineers Associates Co, the consortium intends to build a smart city that is environmentally friendly, well-organised and connected, a Yonhap news agency report said, quoting a statement from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport.

The smart city will accommodate 25,000 to 40,000 households, with construction scheduled to begin in 2019.

The government of South Korea will help form the consortium in 2018, and will set up a special purpose company in 2019 to help push the project forwards.

“It is the first export of the ‘smart city’ project which has been strongly pushed by the ministry,” the statement said, adding that the Kuwaiti project can pave the way for winning similar eco-friendly city construction projects in the Middle East.

Last year, an index released by Navigant, a global research firm, found that Dubai was the Middle East’s leading smart city.

The Smart Cities Index was commissioned by Huawei with the aim of understanding the level of readiness of cities in the Middle East for the next level of smart city adoption and deployment, a statement said.

“As countries in the Gulf are increasingly diversifying their economies away from fossil fuels, they are also coping with the need for rapid digitalisation in business and government,” said Safder Nazir, vice president of Smart Cities and IoT at Huawei Middle East.