The Saudi Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources earmarked 15 billion riyals ($4 billion) as an opening budget to support the transformation in the mining sector in the Kingdom in line with its national program for transformation, Vision 2030.
Khaled Al-Mudayfar, Deputy Minister of Industry and Mineral Resources, confirmed that Saudi Arabia is one of the least spending countries in exploration for minerals in the world. It spends less than 25% of the global spending on exploration per square kilometer, which is equivalent to one tenth of the average countries active in the mining industry.
This, according to Mudayfar, necessitates raising the volume of spending in the Kingdom to or above the global average.
More so, Saudi Arabia intends to auction off 54 mining sites to investors.
“Our strategy focuses on maximizing the value achieved from the Kingdom’s natural resources, by developing mining investment and achieving the optimal utilization of mineral resources so that the mining sector becomes the third pillar in Saudi industry matching oil and petrochemical industries,” Mudayfar said.
He also pointed out that the goal set for the mining sector in the Kingdom is it reaching a contribution of 240 billion riyals ($64 billion) to the GDP, raising state revenues by more than 8.9 billion riyals ($2.3 billion), and generating 219,000 new jobs by 2030.
He added that Saudi Arabia will defer loan payments in the industrial and mining sectors as part of a raft of new measures aimed at reducing the impact of the global coronavirus pandemic.
