Egypt’s first monorail is more than 40 percent complete, the construction companies under-taking the project said on Monday.

The six-kilometre long monorail is being carried out by two of Egypt’s major construction companies, the Arab Contractors and Orascom Construction, as part of the fourth construction phase of the third Cairo metro line.

Work started in November 2017 and is set to be completed by the end of 2018, according to the companies. 

The overground line extends from Cairo's Heliopolis Hisham Barakat station to Adly Mansour station in 10 Ramadan city, passing through the Hikestep, Kebaa and Omar Ibn Al-Khattab stations.

Orascom’s stations manager for the project, Gaber Kassem, said that 100 percent of the project will be implemented by Egyptian workers, and by using pillar construction technology, which he said was new for the country.

In 2017, Egypt's ministries of transportation and housing accepted preliminary blueprints from national and international companies interested in building the country's first electric elevated railway network. 

One of the proposed elevated railway lines will stretch over 35km from 6 October City to suburban Giza, while another planned line would extend the 52km from Nasr City to New Cairo.

Built in the 1980s, Cairo's metro transported about four million passengers daily in the 2013/14 fiscal year, according to the Egyptian Company for Metro Management and Operation (ECMMO).

The company expects to transport about 6 million passengers per day in the financial year 2019/2020.

The last construction phase of Cairo's third metro line is set to be completed by the end of 2018, with a fourth line due to be finished by 2019.