The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has paved the way for development with its ambitious Vision 2030, which aims at economic diversification, the renaissance of non-oil sectors and increasing the contribution of the private sector to GDP, and this can only be achieved through the renaissance of industry and mining as two main tributaries in major economies, and the Kingdom is determined to increase their participation in its GDP by about 15%. When talking about industry in the Kingdom, it should be noted that it was not born out of the moment, but rather it has been extended and rooted since the discovery of oil in the Kingdom in the late thirties of the last century. Over the decades, the Kingdom spared no effort to develop its industry; it established the Industrial Development Fund (1974), the Royal Commission for Jubail and Yanbu (1975), and SABIC in 1976. The roles and tasks undertaken by these institutions and the programs they worked on in order to grow the industrial sector and develop its performance and mechanisms. As a result of the efforts exerted years ago in this direction, the number of factories in the Kingdom today has increased to more than 10,000 factories. We, Mashreq, believe in the importance of the industrial sector and its role in driving the economy, so we will present its most important indicators below so that anyone wishing to invest in it can be aware of them:
- The total number of factories in Saudi Arabia now stands at 10,138; this includes factories in production and factories under construction.
- The building materials industry accounts for the largest percentage of the number of factories in the Kingdom (2,016 factories), followed by the metals industry (1,705 factories).
- There are 1,445 food factories in the Kingdom.
- The plastics and rubber industry has 1,317 factories.
- The number of producing factories – according to the latest statistics – reaches 8,258.
- The number of licensed workers in these production plants is 967,119.
- The capital of these producing factories amounts to 1,214,762,000,000 riyals.
- The Riyadh region accounts for 39.4% of the number of productive factories (3255 factories).
- The Eastern Province accounts for 41.4% of the total capital of producing factories; (503,448,000,000 riyals).
- The proportion of medium-sized factories is estimated at 46.9% of the total number of producing factories.
- The number of factories under construction is estimated at 1,880.
- According to the latest statistics available to us, the number of licensed workers for these factories under construction is 84,342. The capital of these factories is estimated at 67,264,000,000 riyals.
- Food products account for the largest number of factories under construction, with 249 factories (13.4%), followed by rubber and plastics with 222 factories (11.9%).
- Small enterprises account for 72.4% of the total number of factories under construction.
- Riyadh alone accounts for 43.9% of the total number of factories under construction, followed by the Eastern Province with more than 19.2% and the Makkah region with 9.6%.
