For decades, Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province has been dedicated to the Gulf kingdom’s dominance of the global oil market.
But the province with most of Saudi Arabia’s oil reserves and where Saudi Aramco calls home is about to branch out into real estate, retail and tourism as part of the country’s over-arching Vision 2030 which aims to diversify the economy away from oil.
The Eastern Province Municipality has announced the start of the tendering process for the Al Khobar waterfront public-private partnership (PPP) development project.
The project aims to attract firms to develop, operate and maintain mixed-use commercial real estate on three separate plots of land.
The PPP project is intended to be a offered for a period of 25 years, with a total area of 60,960 sq m located on Al Khobar Corniche.
The Eastern Region Municipality said one plot is intended to be a commercial, entertainment, and food and beverage complex, another will house a luxury shopping complex, fine food and drinks restaurants and entertainment facilities while the third will be occupied by a luxury hotel with fine dining facilities.
The municipality added that the project will be tendered in two phases – the first phase is to qualify bidders and the second phase will see those bidders compete to win the contracts.
This is the second municipal sector initiative launched under the privatisation program.
The municipality indicated that the Ministry of Finance will finance part of the project’s capital expenditures, adding that expressions of interest have to be submitted by December 13.
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