Water Resources and Irrigation Minister Mohamed Abdel Aati returned home Tuesday night from Khartoum after attending the signing ceremony of the final contracts for the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) with his Sudanese and Ethiopian counterparts.

The technical teams of Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia signed the final the contracts for GERD technical studies on Tuesday in Khartoum.

They agreed that the French consultancy firms BRL and Artelia will carry out the studies on the GERD impact on the flow of the Nile, while the British law firm Corbett will overlook the legal affairs of the process.

The signing comes within the framework of the December 2015 tripartite talks that culminated in the signing of the "Khartoum Document".

It stipulated a mechanism for resolving GERD-related issues, and set a time frame of eight months to a year to complete the technical studies.

Source: MENA