With approximately $173 billion worth of projects under tender in the GCC, of which $80 billion are in the Saudi Arabia, the Big 5 Saudi Construction Leadership Summit – a leading construction platform which highlights the latest technologies from world-leading brands – is making its timely return to Riyadh this month, for the second consecutive year.
In 2020, the GCC witnessed a drastic decline of 35% in total contract awards of construction projects, this was directly correlated with lower government spending, falling oil prices, and most notably the Covid-19 pandemic, according to Sovereign AEI (Arabian Enterprise Incubators), leading experts in foreign direct investment and leaders of commercial success in Saudi Arabia.
Despite these factors resulting in 2021 being the worst for the market in almost two decades, Saudi Arabia’s standing as the region’s largest economy should encourage optimism, it stated.
Paul Arnold, Managing Director of Sovereign Saudi Arabia, elaborated by highlighting multiple reasons for why the GCC is well positioned for a strong resurgence.
“As the kingdom strives to reduce its dependence on oil and simultaneously diversify the economy, efforts to ramp up PIF (Public Investment Fund) tendering in recent months have and will continue to help achieve the advancement of Vision 2030,” stated Arnold.
Arnold pointed out that currently there are over $2.3 trillion of known planned and un-awarded projects in the GCC pipeline, and of this, the lion’s share is of Saudi Arabia’s with a whopping $1.18 trillion projects.
“Even if only half of the scheduled projects are to go ahead, this would still compare favourably with the more than $1.2 trillion worth of contracts that have been awarded in the region over the past decade,” explained Arnold.
The Big 5 Saudi Construction Leadership Summit has been known to spur collective collaboration, and with projected figures indicating a very healthy short-term pipeline, the 11th annual edition couldn’t be happening at a better time, he stated.
Source: www.zawya.com
