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Saudi Arabia Allocates Sand, Landfill Site for Mining Activities

Deputy Minister of Industry and Mineral Resources visits a national ceramic manufacturing factory in Saudi Arabia on Thursday. (Asharq Al-Awsat)
Deputy Minister of Industry and Mineral Resources visits a national ceramic manufacturing factory in Saudi Arabia on Thursday. (Asharq Al-Awsat)
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Saudi Arabia Allocates Sand, Landfill Site for Mining Activities

Deputy Minister of Industry and Mineral Resources visits a national ceramic manufacturing factory in Saudi Arabia on Thursday. (Asharq Al-Awsat)
Deputy Minister of Industry and Mineral Resources visits a national ceramic manufacturing factory in Saudi Arabia on Thursday. (Asharq Al-Awsat)

The Saudi Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources said on Thursday it will allocate the sand and landfill site in the Khulais Governorate, west of the Kingdom, which extends over an area of 39.6 square kilometers, for a mining complex.

The ministry is working to develop the areas adjacent to the mining sites by providing residents with job opportunities, raising the proportion of purchases from the local markets, and developing plans for effective communication, in addition to adhering to the environmental requirements necessary to preserve the wellbeing of communities.

Jarrah Al-Jarrah, the official spokesperson at the Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources, explained that the recent decision would contribute to preserving the mining sites and protecting them from transgressions.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources, in cooperation with the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Scholarship Program, launched the Promising Path - a program that aims to train, empower and qualify national cadres to meet the requirements of the Saudi labor market and raise the efficiency of human capital in industry and mining.

The program focuses on providing training that supports private sector institutions in promising activities, and contributes to matching the requirements of the industrial and mining market with the qualifications and skills of national cadres.

It also seeks to provide on-the-job training through scholarships, starting with employment in technical and vocational specializations, in addition to providing training programs that are not available in the Kingdom, in coordination with industrial and mining establishments.

Earlier this week, the Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources launched the second phase of the Future Factories Program, which targets 217 factories in the first category of the program. The factories achieved an advanced level of self-assessment according to the Smart Industry Readiness Index (SIRI) at 2.4.

The Ministry had held more than 13 detailed workshops to introduce the program to the factories targeted in the first tranche. These workshops were attended by representatives of over 140 factories.

The program divides factories into four tranches by capital, led by the first tranche with capital of more than SAR 500 million. The three stages will be announced gradually in the coming period.

The Future Factories Program, which was launched in July 2022, aims to move 4,000 factories away from relying on low-skilled and low-wage workers to automation and manufacturing efficiency, in order to raise the competitiveness of the national industry and contribute to providing quality jobs for national cadres.

The program offers many development mechanisms, which can be used in all licensed factories in the Kingdom, at different levels of technical development. It also aims to provide the appropriate means to raise the competitiveness of the industrial sector, and to find alternative solutions that contribute to improving the quality of local factory products, reducing operational costs, and raising the flexibility and responsiveness of supply chains.

On a different note, Eng. Khaled Al-Mudaifer, the Deputy Minister of Industry and Mineral Resources for Mining Affairs, visited on Thursday the Saudi Ceramics Factory.

The visit aimed at expressing the ministry’s support for local industries in the mining sector, monitoring the quality of the local product, and strengthening cooperation with the various partners to enhance the quality of the national product and its ability to compete, in addition to providing market needs and improving supply.

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Lebanon Hopes to Meet Foreign Bondholders in Coming Year, Finance Minister Says

A view shows Lebanon's Central Bank building in Beirut, Lebanon January 12, 2023. (Reuters)
A view shows Lebanon's Central Bank building in Beirut, Lebanon January 12, 2023. (Reuters)
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Lebanon Hopes to Meet Foreign Bondholders in Coming Year, Finance Minister Says

A view shows Lebanon's Central Bank building in Beirut, Lebanon January 12, 2023. (Reuters)
A view shows Lebanon's Central Bank building in Beirut, Lebanon January 12, 2023. (Reuters)

Lebanese officials hope to meet international bondholders to talk about restructuring debt in the next 12 months but are not planning any meetings at the World Bank/IMF Spring meetings next week, finance minister Yassin Jaber said on Tuesday.

Jaber spoke to Reuters just days before travelling to Washington for the Spring meetings - one of the biggest gatherings for financial policy makers and investors - where Lebanon will seek to show it has made progress on economic reforms to address the underlying causes of its financial crash.

Lebanon's economy began unravelling in 2019 after years of corruption and profligate spending by the country's ruling elite, and tipped into a sovereign default on its $31 billion of outstanding international bonds in March 2020.

Asked whether he planned to meet international bondholders in the next year, Jaber said, "definitely, definitely, this is as they say the elephant in the room."

"You can't escape it in the end. Lebanon is keen to resolve this issue, God willing," he said.

But the country needed to make progress on reforms - including reforming the banking sector and boosting government revenues through reforms to tax systems and customs collection - before it could start talks, Jaber said.

"We wanted, first of all, to do our homework, to put the whole reform process on the right track to get started. You can't have a house in total disorder and then say, 'I want to negotiate,'" he said.

The Lebanese delegation to the spring meetings will be the first outing at an IMF/World Bank meeting for Lebanon's new government, which took the reins in February and pledged to seek a new IMF programme. Jaber said it would be the first time a Lebanese finance minister attends in more than a decade.

Economy Minister Amer Bisat is scheduled to give an outlook on Lebanon's economy at a JPMorgan investor conference held on the sidelines, according to documents seen by Reuters.

The creditor group - which includes the heavyweight funds Amundi, Ashmore, BlackRock, BlueBay, Fidelity and T-Rowe Price as well as a group of smaller hedge funds - has recently appointed a financial advisor in preparation for debt talks.

Shortly after the bondholder group originally formed in 2021, it said it held a "blocking stake" of more than 25% across a number of Lebanon's bonds, making it a critical player in any debt restructuring.

The chunk of the bonds are also held by domestic commercial banks or the Lebanese central bank, which bought $3 billion of debt directly from a previous government in 2019.

Lebanon's bonds trade at deeply distressed levels of around 15-16 cents in the dollar. However, that is a sharp uptick from the single digits they traded in before Israel's military campaign badly weakened Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, long viewed as an obstacle to overcoming Lebanon's political paralysis.

In January, Lebanon's cabinet extended the statute of limitations on legal action over Eurobonds for another three years. Jaber said the move "reassured the bondholders".