The Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources announced today, Monday, that it had issued 82 new industrial licenses during the month of November, distributed across six industrial sectors.
The food products manufacturing sector led the new licenses with 16, followed by the manufacture of other non-metallic mineral products with 14, followed by the manufacture of fabricated metal products (excluding machinery and equipment) with 12 licenses, and then the manufacture of paper and paper products, the manufacture of apparel, and the manufacture of chemicals and chemical products, with 5 licenses each.
A report issued by the Ministry’s National Center for Industrial and Mining Information revealed that the total number of industrial licenses issued by the Ministry from the beginning of 2022 through the end of last November reached 885, while the number factories operating in the Kingdom as of the end of the same month was 10,742, with a total investment volume of 1.419 trillion riyals.
The report indicated that the investment volume for new licenses in November reached 7.175 billion riyals, while small enterprises accounted for the majority of new industrial licenses during the same month at 85.37 %, followed by medium-sized enterprises at 12.20 %, then micro-enterprises at 2.44 %, while national factories accounted for the largest share of total licenses issued by investment type at 82.93 %, followed by foreign enterprises and joint-venture enterprises at 8.54% each.
A report by the National Center for Industrial and Mining Information indicated that 50 factories began production last November, with a total investment of 830 million riyals. Non-metallic mineral factories led the way with 11 factories, followed by food processing plants with 10, chemical plants with 6, then rubber and plastics plants, base metals plants, and non-ferrous metals plants, with 4 plants in each category. Domestic plants accounted for 90% of the total plants that began production, followed by foreign-owned factories at 6%, and then joint-venture factories at 4%.
The report showed that the new industrial licenses were distributed across 10 administrative regions, led by the Riyadh region with 30 licenses, followed by the Eastern Province with 21 licenses, then the Makkah region with 10 licenses, the Madinah region with 8 licenses, the Asir region with 4 licenses, the Qassim region with 3 licenses, followed by the Jizan and Hail regions with two licenses each, and the Al-Jawf and Najran regions with one license each.
It is worth noting that the Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources publishes, through the National Center for Industrial and Mining Information, monthly reports on key industrial indicators that illustrate the nature of industrial activity in the Kingdom, as well as revealing the extent of change the sector is experiencing in terms of new industrial investments and the number of jobs the sector provides.
