New mining project to enhance GDP: Saudi

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman yesterday inaugurated the Waad Al-Shamaal mining project which is expected to boost the kingdom’s gross domestic product by 24 billion riyals ($6.4 billion) and its non-oil GDP by around 3 per cent. The kingdom will invest 85 billion riyals in the project, a 440-square km city for mining industries in the northern region, the ministry of energy, industry and mineral resources said in a statement. The completion of the next phase will lift the kingdom’s phosphate fertiliser production to 9 million tonnes annually, Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih said.

“This will make the kingdom the second largest producer of phosphate fertilisers in the world,” Falih added. Mining is key to the kingdom’s efforts to diversify its economy away from hydrocarbons, as the government aims to more than triple the sector’s contribution to the nation’s economic output by 2030. Saudi authorities estimate the region holds 500 million tonnes of phosphate ore, around 7pc of global proven reserves, mainly in the Al Jalamid and Umm Wu’al areas between Arar and Turaif.

The energy ministry estimates the kingdom’s unused mineral resources to be valued at 5 trillion riyals ($1.33 trillion). Saudi Arabia’s efforts to build an economy that does not rely on oil and state subsidies involves a shift towards mining vast untapped reserves of bauxite, the main source of aluminium, as well as phosphate, gold, copper and uranium.