Tertiary Minerals

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has an area of 2.1 million sq. km equivalent to about one-quarter of the land area of the United States. The capital city is Riyadh and the main trading city is Jeddah. The Monarchy governs a population of 28 million people.

The Saudi Government has recently proclaimed the mineral sector as a development priority and has set ambitious growth targets. A new Mining Code has been enacted and a number of other legislative changes have been made during the past few years with the objective of increasing foreign investor interest in Saudi Arabia generally. This includes the introduction of a new Foreign Investment Law under which:

Foreign investors can own 100p.c. of a business with no local partner required.

Foreign investors can benefit from incentives previously available only to local companies such as soft project development loans.

Additional development finance is available through the Saudi/British Offset programme whereby companies benefiting from supply contracts to the Saudi Government are obliged to re-invest a portion of the proceeds into development projects in Saudi. The Government has also established the Geological Survey of Saudi Arabia in order to remove a barrier to accessing geological information in the country.