RIYADH: Saudi Arabia aims to strike around SR15 billion ($4 billion) worth of infrastructure deals with private investors this year, the head of the National Center for Privatization, Rayyan Nagadi, told Bloomberg.
That would be the most since the body was established to accelerate privatizations in 2017. It also aims to complete several asset sales this year, he said.
Saudi Arabia is hoping to speed up privatizations to narrow a budget deficit that ballooned last year due to the pandemic and a slump in oil revenue.
“We have high expectations for the number of public-private partnerships (PPPs) and divestments that we’re going to see in 2022 and 2023,” Nagadi told the news wire.
“We have a clear pipeline of transactions. We just need to set the priority for them. We now have a lot more clarity than we did two or three years ago,” he added.
The law, passed in March, aims to speed the process by removing requirements to get various approvals and waivers from the cabinet, Nagadi said.
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