About $13bn of private sector investment needed to exploit opportunities, says US-Saudi Business Council report
Saudi Arabia needs about $13 billion in private sector investment to fully exploit the potential of the kingdom’s $1.3 trillion worth of mineral endowments, a new report has said.
The study into the country’s mining sector by the US-Saudi Business Council describes the outlook for the sector as “very favourable”, citing government initiatives to encourage investment. These include a planned update of the kingdom’s mining investment code to make it more investor-friendly and the development of a National Geological Database marking out exploration opportunities.
The mining and quarrying sector made up 30.1 per cent of the kingdom’s nominal gross domestic product last year, but that figure included oil and gas extraction. Excluding this, the sector contributed 1.4 per cent of GDP.
The Saudi Geological Survey identified 5,574 metallic and non-metallic mineral sites by the end of 2018. Of these, 2,919 contain non-metallic materials such as phosphates, silica, marble, limestone and quartz, and the remaining 2,533 have metallic deposits — gold, zinc, copper and tin-tungsten.
Source: www.thenational.ae
