35 Industrial Cities, More than 3,500 Factories Are Leading Saudi Arabia’s Transformation into a Leading Industrial Power

The Saudi Authority for Industrial Cities and Technology Zones (MODON) has achieved qualitative accomplishments in a short period of time, represented in MODON's making the most of the cooperation and complementarity relations with both public and private sectors to strengthen its strategy that aims to enable the industrial sector, contribute to the development of local industry, and to attract local and foreign investments that have the added-value to its industrial cities.

Established in 2001, today, MODON oversees 35 existing industrial cities. The Industrial Cities include 3,500 productive factories whereas around 500,000 workers are employed. Until now, the developed industrial lands in the industrial cities exceed 198,8 million square meters, geographically distributed and there are three sectors under which all the industrial cities in the Kingdom fall; these are cities of the Eastern Sector, cities of the Central Sector, and cities of the Western Sector, scattered to cover the regions of the Kingdom, with total investment amount exceeding 367 billion riyals. MODON also provides several advantages, products, services, and attracting incentives, to meet the requirements of attracting investments from GCC, Arab, and global markets to Saudi Arabia.

As a part of the Saudi Vision 2030, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has established the National Industrial Development and Logistics Vision Realization Program (NIDLP) that aims to transform the Kingdom into a leading industrial power and an international logistics platform in a number of promising areas, focusing on the 4th Industrial Revolution, in a way that will generate ample employment opportunities for Saudi cadres, boost trade balance and maximize local content. The program focuses on four key sectors; industry, mining, energy and logistics. The program also designs and provides a range of essential enablers that include developing appropriate systems, providing the required financing, developing infrastructure, industrial lands and private areas, and enhancing research and innovation.

Within this framework, the Director General of MODON, Eng. Khalid bin Mohammed Al-Salem, said in a statement to the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) that the Saudi Vision 2030 has adopted industry as a strategic choice to diversify the Saudi economy, towards achieving sustainable development. He added that MODON has become one of the pillars of the Saudi Vision 2030, as an enabler of industry that oversees 35 industrial cities around the Kingdom and through assigned initiatives by NIDLP.

MODON has launched its new strategy aiming to enable the industrial sector, contribute to the development of local industry, strengthen local and global partnerships to attract local and foreign investments that have the added-value, and to transfer and localize industrial knowledge in the industrial cities. Eng. Al-Salem also stated that MODON approach is based on integration, cooperation, and building on what have been achieved to provide continuous development, at the level of internal work environment, relationships with local and foreign investors, government agencies, and with private and public sectors.

The Director General of MODON said: " During the past period, we focused on expanding the scope of MODON from providing major infrastructures into playing an active role as enabler of industry, enhancing factories industrial competitiveness, promoting the ease of doing business via reducing the number of required industrial licenses and expanding their validity period, and reducing the time and requirement to obtain industrial licenses, in addition to cooperating with competent authorities to facilitate access to credit, and to provide advanced infrastructures and internet services in cooperation with the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology. MODON also launched a number of new products being provided to its industrial partners, and the number of products increased from only 4 in 2015 to 14 products by the end of 2019, and the industrial sector will witness the positive impact of these products on micro, small, and medium enterprises and will contribute to strengthening supply chain in Saudi Arabia."
Eng. Al-Salem added that MODON has succeeded in promoting the growth of the privatization of industry, both in quality and quantity aspects in the industrial cities, supported by providing a number of incentives. Promoting the growth of privatization comes supported by some of MODON’s new products, launched in 2019, he added. MODON witnessed a growing demand for these products, despite the fact that some of them were trial products. Eng. Al-Salem also stated that privatization numbers has exceeded the expectations, and the product of " ready-built factories" keeps attracting investors.