Saudi Arabia Power & Water Industry Overview - May 2010

Amidst the global economic downturn in 2009, an industry which has attracted the fifth largest investment in the world is the Power and Water desalination industry of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. As the country diversifies from being the world’s largest producer of oil to a rapidly industrializing economy, infrastructure is struggling to keep up and the utilities sector in particular faces a widening gap between demand and supply. Traditionally low tariffs coupled with rigidity to upward revisions across the power and water sectors have made it difficult for the government alone to expand capacities to cater to rising demand on a profitable scale, necessitating privatization that has been the buzzword of the decade.

However, the pace of progress across the sector has been hampered by a number of socio economic factors, including global economic conditions, private investors facing global credit shortage, slow pace of privatization and reform in the kingdom and factors more specific to the industry such as low tariffs that do not recover costs, lack of metering and past sectoral policies that encourage wastage and widen demand supply gap.

Measures have been instituted to change these restraints to the growth of the industry to its best potential, including research on alternative fuels that would reduce costs and conserve non-renewable resources and policy actions to check wastage of existing resources in the power and water sectors such as withdrawal of subsidies to agriculture and instead rely on imports to meet domestic demand. The effects of these measures are likely to be witnessed over a period of time.

Ventures Middle East with its vast experience on up to date tracking of the power and water projects across the Middle East, aims to study the drivers and restraints to the growth of the power and water desalination industry in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It studies the industry in terms of its size, its key players, with a statistical overview of the most recent construction spend and contractor awards in the sector. The report also conducts a probability impact study of the various political, economic, social, technological, legislative and environmental trends impacting the power and water desalination industry in Saudi Arabia.

This study is a critical guide to understanding the forces that produce the changes in the power and water markets and in making informed decisions on the industry.