Saudi Arabia unveils 27 supportive measures for industrial and mining areas

Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources has unveiled 27 supportive measures to meet the concerns directly influencing private industrial and mining enterprises and investors.

These measures include;

• Delaying and restructuring loan payments
• Generating new products to support working capital
• Excusing, decreasing or delaying the payment of fees due to the ministry or its ecosystem
• Extending industrial licenses expiry period and time constrains for building and commissioning new plants
• Deferring previous claims of “reserved capacity” fees due
• Automatically renewing industrial licenses
• Renewing labor support documents and
• Renewing customs exclusion and chemical clearance documents.

Supporting Initiatives for Industrial investors

• Extending the time-frame for achieving the requirements of issuing and renewing licenses
• Eliminating service suspensions
• Excluding payments of financial consideration and fee
• Changing conditional allocation notices
• Prolonging investment agreements and delaying their cancelation procedures.

Supporting Initiatives for Investors in the Mining Sector

• Delaying the implementation of mining licenses work programs
• Prolonging the period for completion of requirements for issuing and renewing licenses
• Extending the financial claim period for holders of small mines licenses, raw materials mines’ licenses, mining licenses for payment of financial dues
• Extending the period of export permits and
• Extending the validity period of all valid mining licenses.

Additional support measures 

• 30% discount on electricity bills
• Settlement requirement of only 50% of electricity bill dues and
• Option to defer payments.

Strengthening the concept of local content and national industry.

This is accomplished through expediting the incorporation of local content demands within companies that have 51% ownership by the Public Investment Fund (PIF)  in accordance with the rules and regulations of tendering and sourcing works and procurements in favor of local content. A sum of, $13.3 billion has been earmarked to expedite the settlements of the private sector dues.

The Corporate Sustainability Program Support initiative and the Project Support Fund initiative have been initiated to accelerate and mitigate loan requirements and defer their payment. These actions provide a loan scheme, permitting the private sector to secure lowered interest rate loans and payment deferrals for the year 2020.

Ministry has also targeted areas of concerns and provided support to the private sector in terms of;

• Delaying the submission and remittance of tax declarations
• Suspending imposition of fines and services stopping procedures,
• In addition to procedures for voluntary disclosure of any undisclosed tax obligations and exemption from fines rising from that disclosure, for all taxpayers
• Extending expiry of resident IDs and
• Deferring the payment of commercial records fees.

The Kingdom has committed extensive efforts into its COVID-19 emergency response plan which can rival international standards.