Saudi Industrial Development Fund News

Construction work has begun on a joint venture to build a shipyard on Saudi Arabia's eastern coast, oil rig builder Lamprell Plc said in a statement on Friday. The joint venture, International Maritime Industries (IMI), started operations after reaching agreement for a loan from the state-backed Saudi Industrial Development Fund (SIDF), the statement said. The SIDF agreed in principle last year to provide 3.75 billion riyals ($1 billion) in financing for the project. IMI is a partnership between United Arab Emirates-based Lamprell, state oil giant Saudi Aramco, National Shipping Co of Saudi Arabia (Bahri) and South Korea's Hyundai Heavy Industries Co.

Bahri, Lamprell, Hyundai Heavy are partners and will build VLCC's starting in 2019. Saudi Aramco plans to build the Gulf's largest shipyard through a joint venture with three companies that it announced on Wednesday, a $5.2 billion project aimed at helping reduce the economy's reliance on oil. Low oil prices have drastically slowed Saudi Arabia's economy so it is trying to create manufacturing jobs and produce goods and services which traditionally it has imported. Its strategy is to use large amounts of government money and the procurement budgets of big state-run enterprises, such as national oil firm Aramco, to attract foreign expertise to develop strategic industries.