The Kingdom wants to attract $170 billion of investment in its mining sector by the end of the decade, exploiting rising global demand for metals crucial to the energy transition.
“That’s a lot of money,” the Saudi mining minister, Bandar Alkhorayef, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in Riyadh. Minerals are “becoming more and more essential for the advancement of manufacturing, energy” and industries including automotive.
The investment will come from foreign and local firms, including state miner Maaden. It should enable the sector’s contribution to gross domestic product to reach $64 billion annually by 2030, he said, more than four times today’s figure of $17 billion.
Mining is a crucial part of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s attempt to diversify the economy from oil. Still, development has been slow since the kingdom announced in 2018 that its minerals were probably worth $1.3 trillion.
State-controlled mining firm Maaden said last year it will invest a “huge amount” in battery metals.
Alkhorayef’s comments come as traders warn the world could run short of metals needed to build electric vehicles as well as solar- and wind-power plants. Prices of commodities such as copper, zinc and nickel have rallied significantly in recent weeks.
On Thursday, the Saudi ministry said it will auction exploration licenses to foreign investors for the first time. The sale will be for deposits of copper, zinc, gold, silver and lead about 200 kilometers from Riyadh, the capital.
The area will need roughly 2 billion riyals ($530 million) of investment and contains an estimated 26 million tons of ore, which foreign investors would be given 100% ownership of, said Abdulrahman Al-Belushi, general manager of the ministry’s mining strategy department.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by The Finance World staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
