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Saudi Arabia plans to privatise 11 airports by 2020, an executive from Saudi Arabia's General Authority for Civil Aviation (GACA) said.
King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh will be privatised this year and will be operated under a new company to be called the Airports Company of Riyadh, Sakhr Al Mulhem, general manager of property and commercial development at the GACA, told Zawya on the sidelines of the Youth Business Forum in Riyadh last week.
The other airports which will be privatised over the next four years include King Abdul Aziz International Airport in Jeddah, King Khalid Airport in Riyadh and King Fahd International Airport in Dammam, as well as the airports in Abha, Al Qassim, Hail, Bisha, Yanbu, Jizan and Al Ahsa.
The civil aviation authority said in 2010 that it planned to spend $10 billion on projects to upgrade its network of airports by 2020, according to official statistics published by the GACA last year.
The move to privatise the airports comes as part of the kingdom's Vision 2030 economic transformation plan, launched last month by Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, which aims to diversify the economy away from its dependence on hydrocarbon revenues and offer a bigger role to the private sector.
The majority of the kingdom's government reserves come from hydrocarbons and global oil prices have fallen steeply from a high of above $100 a barrel in early 2014 to $46 last week. As a result, the ratings agency Moody's has estimated that the government's annual budget deficit will average 9.5 percent of gross domestic product between 2016 and 2020, amounting to $324 billion.
(Editing by Shane McGinley)
© Zawya 2016
