Saudi Arabia to overhaul airports in $12bn plan

“We’re planning about SAR46bn in investment until 2020 in our airport infrastructure, but it could turn out to be a lot more than that,” said Abdullah Rehaimi, president of Saudi Arabia’s General Authority for Civil Aviation (GACA).

“We’ve started the process to set up a new holding company to manage all of the kingdom’s airports,” Rehaimi said, adding that the new company will at first be government-owned, but then may be offered to the public.

“It’s likely that the Saudi government will consider going to the market when the time is right. I imagine that could happen between 2012 and 2015,” he said.

After years of underinvestment, Saudi Arabia, the Middle East’s biggest economy and the world’s top oil exporter, is spending billions of dollars to overhaul its airports and other transport infrastructure.

“We’re very behind in the development of our airports, but we’re now transforming them into economic zones,” Rehaimi said.

GACA is working with the International Finance Corp, an arm of the World Bank, to develop three airport city projects at the kingdom’s three international airports in Riyadh, Jeddah, and Dammam.