RIYADH: ACWA Power plans to expand its water desalination plants in the Middle East and Africa within the next few years, especially in Egypt and Morocco, the CEO said.
Speaking to Arab News at the Future of Desalination Conference in Riyadh, Paddy Padmanathan, ACWA Power’s CEO, said that the developer sees Egypt as the next domain to participate in desalination.
“We see opportunities emerging in Morocco and South Africa in the not too distant future,” he added.
With assets in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Oman, ACWA Power is the world’s largest private developer of seawater desalination.
Padmanathan said the company would also open the world’s largest reverse osmosis plant in Abu Dhabi next month to facilitate efficient power consumption.
Commenting on water desalination in the Gulf Cooperation Council region, Padmanathan said that the prices are the lowest because they have a large market.
“These countries are very creditworthy. They have a track record of delivering, honoring contracts and getting projects done. They have also been advancing the technology revolution,” he said.
However, he said that the rest of the world had reached a point where it needed more water desalination, even without considering climate change.
Globally, there is a growing gap between supply and demand, which will result in a 30 percent increase in water demand by 2030, Padmanathan said. “The gap is widening,” he added.
With ACWA Power’s expansion into wider regions, Padmanathan expects the cost of desalination to remain low and even fall further as the market grows.
Commenting on ACWA Power’s growth volume, Padmanathan said: “We expect big growth in the future from desalination.”
The CEO added the Shuaibah 3 independent water and power project is undergoing restructuring.
As part of the Kingdom’s commitment to reducing carbon emissions, he said the country would shut down all oil-fired power plants. However, Shuaibah would be restructured into a RO plant.
In June 2022, ACWA Power announced that the Shuaibah 3 IWPP would transform the thermal power and desalination facility into a seawater RO desalination plant, renaming it Shuaibah 3 Independent Water Project.
“The restructuring would be complete in the next 10 days,” added Padmanathan.
ACWA Power is also working closely with the Saudi government to develop an innovative structure, the first of its kind that removes all of the oil use and produces water with a RO plant.
The company this week signed an industrial development agreement with Water Global Access, a research and technology development firm, to integrate hydraulic injection desalination technology at scale.
According to a statement, the agreement comes six months after both companies signed a collaboration agreement to develop a roadmap for HID across ACWA Power’s projects.
It will involve the implementation of a pilot project that includes HID in the Gulf Cooperation Council region, following research that has demonstrated that the technology has the potential to break the 2 kilowatt-hour barriers of energy consumption to produce 1 cubic meter of water from seawater.
RIYADH: After leading an ascent that began in 2018, Saudi banks’ real estate lending has slowed down over the past year caused by a decline in growth in the retail sector, according to the Saudi Central Bank, also known as SAMA.
In the second quarter of 2021, the real estate lending growth rate halved to 5.4 percent from 10.8 percent in the first quarter of 2021.
Although real estate loans by banks increased by SR28.2 billion ($7.5 billion) between January and March 2021 to SR502.7 billion between April and June 2021, their growth rate decelerated compared to the past six quarters.
Moreover, this decrease in the growth trend has continued throughout the second quarter, where the total value of real estate loans stood at SR638.7 billion.
This dip came after a reduction in real estate bank loans to individuals who suffered the same fate since the quarter ending June 2021.
As a result, the bank loan growth rate stumbled from 13.6 percent to 5.7 percent in this quarter.
However, this was not the case during the coronavirus pandemic.
Saudi banks’ real estate lending surged 133 percent from SR215.6 billion in the second quarter of 2018 to SR502 billion in the second quarter of 2021, according to the data compiled by Arab News. The period was considered the peak of coronavirus restrictions.
The retail sector has driven this staggering increase, knowing that individual loans grew 180 percent, from SR128.3 billion to SR358.0 billion over this period.
As a result, the share of retail loans in Saudi banks’ total real estate lending portfolio went up to 79 percent at the end of the second quarter of 2022.
On the other hand, corporate loans kept decreasing their share of real estate bank loans.
Until 2019, corporate loans comprised approximately 40 percent of total credit banks’ loans. However, this number kept diminishing until it reached a mere 25 percent in the past year.
So, what could have been a possible cause for this change in trend? During the coronavirus outbreak, the Saudi government took it upon itself to aid citizens in their search for an affordable mortgage plan.
The government achieved it by removing the 15 percent value added tax from property deals and instead levied a lower 5 percent real estate transaction tax.
In fact, first-time Saudi homebuyers were exempted for transactions of up to SR1 million, according to a 2021 report by Bloominvest titled “Saudi Arabia Residential Market and its impact on the banking sector.”
The banks later increased their mortgage loans to align with the government’s plans to boost home ownership. This trend was evident through new residential mortgage finance for individuals provided by banks’ impeccable growth, hitting its all-time high record of 245 percent year on year in the third quarter of 2019 at SR19.5 billion in comparison to SR5.7 billion in the third quarter of 2018.
According to the SAMA data, this led to a 91 percent rise in the total value of new mortgage loans by banks to individuals.
However — like real estate loans — new mortgage finance loans to individuals plummeted over the past year. The number of new mortgage finance contracts declined 35 percent from 65,667 in the first quarter of 2021 to 42,693 in the second quarter of 2021. The value of new mortgage finance loans decreased 33 percent, from SR49.0 billion to SR32.8 billion during the same period. It fell further to SR31.2 billion in the second quarter of 2022.
Both contract and value mortgage loans performed slightly better in their year-on-year performances in the second quarter of 2022, which could have signified a possible recovery; however, this was countered by another drastic decrease in quarterly values of mortgage loans and contracts.
Therefore, it seems like the future of real estate loans to individuals will continue on a downward spiral.
CAIRO: The financial technology industry has been one of the most promising sectors globally, and Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 blueprint is fueling fintech development in the country.
The Saudi government has been pushing initiatives toward the sector like never before. It set up Fintech Saudi, an initiative of the central bank to boost financial technology in all subsectors. In June 2022, the Saudi Cabinet approved the Kingdom’s financial technology development strategy focused on nurturing fintech players from 90 in 2022 to 525 by 2030. But given the sector’s enormous potential, do the numbers add up? Some successful startup executives believe there is considerable scope for development in the fintech sector, and more players yield better services and growth. “If you look at Saudi Arabia today, there are a lot of financial services that require advancement and improvement in consumer experience,” Abdulaziz Saja, general manager of Tabby Saudi Arabia, a leading buy now, pay later platform, told Arab News. Saja said that increased fintech players would benefit the Kingdom if each company focuses on a specific service and creates value through specialization. The Kingdom is one of the largest economies in the Middle East and North Africa. However, compared to neighboring countries, the current number of fintech players would seem too low. For example, last year, the UAE and the UK had 136 and 2,047 fintech companies, respectively, compared with 82 in the Kingdom, according to industry figures.
Indeed, with more fintech players, the sector will become more competitive. A founder of an 11-month-old Saudi fintech startup would see that as harmful for business, but Ali Alhazmi, CEO and founder of OXO E-Shops, believes otherwise. Alhazmi told Arab News that adding fintech players in the sector will drive competition, but it is necessary to boost growth. “Competition is a good thing for the market,” Alhazmi said, “adding new players will be healthy as it makes existing companies fight harder for their market share and deliver the right values for their customers, which will boost the economy.” The country has seen many entrepreneurs entering the market recently as the central bank granted two licenses in August, bringing the total number of licensed fintech companies to 19. Moreover, Djamel Mohand, chief operating officer of Foodics, a prominent fintech player in the Kingdom, stated that the growing number of licenses issued by the central bank indicates growth. “The fintech sector in Saudi Arabia is thriving at a light-speed pace. The two main factors are the booming number of entrepreneurs wanting to disrupt the space and the exceptional support of the Saudi government from a regulatory, facilitation and access to capital perspective,” he told Arab News.
RIYADH: International Business Machines Corp. will soon introduce remote-sensing technology in Saudi Arabia to track and measure carbon dioxide emissions and footprint, disclosed a top company official.
Speaking on the sidelines of the Global AI Summit in Riyadh, IBM’s chief technology officer for the Middle East and North Africa, Anthony Butler, told Arab News that the company will deploy artificial intelligence to achieve the Kingdom’s sustainability goals.
The American tech giant is partnering with the Saudi Authority for Data and Artificial Intelligence and the Ministry of Energy in driving AI in the industrial sector using some of their emerging technologies.
“Broadly, what we’ll be focusing on initially will be how we use artificial intelligence to address some of the challenges around sustainability,” Butler said.
Using multiple satellites and imaging technologies, the company will train an AI model to recognize and pinpoint various gas forms across the country. Doing so will help with earlier and better visibility of the problem, which is impossible with conventional measurement approaches.
Taking measurements of carbon emissions and installing sensors are costly, and sending people to monitor physically can also be time-consuming and expensive, he said.
Satellite technology, on the other hand, can identify hotspots in terms of greenhouse gas emissions in a city.
“Saudi Arabia has unique weather, and we will be testing the technology for the first time in these conditions. But we’re confident it will deliver value,” he added.
The technology, according to Butler, has been tested and even published in peer-reviewed journals. However, it will be introduced in the region for the first time.
IBM has delivered a lot of value to the oil and gas industry worldwide through its partnerships and its technology, said Butler.
He added that the company uses AI and other technologies to develop new materials that can store carbon dioxide, a paramount concern for the global oil and gas industry.
During US President Joe Biden’s visit to the Kingdom in July, IBM partnered with the Saudi information technology authority and committed to training 100,000 Saudis in advanced technologies, including AI.
RIYADH: The cloud computing association of Saudi Arabia will hold the Saudi Cloud Computing Conference from Dec. 5-6, said a senior official.
Speaking on the sidelines of the Global AI Summit in Riyadh, emerging tech adviser and expert at Saudi Cloud Computing Association Abdulaziz AlBatli told Arab News that the conference would be held annually, featuring global keynote speakers.
SCCC, set to debut by the end of 2022 in Riyadh, will showcase the latest advancements and breakthroughs in cloud computing, explore opportunities and define the industry’s outlook.
“We are inviting people from Europe and the US who are experts in such regard. We are also inviting local talent from Saudi and the region to deliver the lessons learned and success stories for cloud adoption,” AlBatli added.
He said SCCA is collaborating with several government entities to deliver the right message at the two-day forum. However, he did not confirm or deny whether deals could occur at the hybrid event.
The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development support the association, according to AlBatli.
“Through these two ministries, we run our programs and initiatives, not aiming for profit but to upskilling and rescaling the talents,” he added.
SCCA trains students and employees across the Kingdom on cloud computing and emerging tech and runs an awareness exercise to upskill people in general and specialists in particular about the types, risks and benefits of cloud computing.
He said the association has trained over 10,000 people in the past year and intends to double that number in the coming years, both in cloud computing and emerging technologies.
Besides the government affiliation, the association has also partnered with private entities.
“We have joined forces with other societies or associations to deliver the utmost programs to the beneficiaries,” he added.
When it comes to mindsets, the association’s role is to provide knowledge, know-how and change management.
SCCA also informs people that cloud computing has benefits beyond lowering costs, such as providing insight into how cloud computing ensures sustainability and data recovery in case of attacks and failures.
The association is also in charge of announcing programs and initiatives, accepting and enrolling beneficiaries, and preparing them for market enrollment.
The opening panel discussion, Saudi Vision 2030 for Digitalization and Data Storage Capacity Development, will explore the urgency to opt for cloud-based solutions and the Cloud-First Policy. It will also dwell on the Saudi public sector is migrating into the cloud.
RIYADH: Financial services company Lazard is set to hire Citigroup’s Saudi Arabia CEO Wassim Al-Khatib to support the boutique firm’s advisory operations across the Middle East and North African region.
Al-Khatib is expected to join Lazard as CEO for its MENA financial advisory business, Bloomberg reported citing people familiar with the matter.
Citigroup confirmed Al-Khatib's resignation and said that Carmen Haddad, vice chairperson for Citigroup Middle East and country officer in Saudi Arabia, will be taking over as acting CEO, as the bank seeks to replace him.
A representative for Lazard and Al Khatib couldn’t be immediately reached for comment.
Al Khatib joined the New York-based bank as CEO in Saudi Arabia in 2021 and was previously head of investment banking at NCB Capital for about 15 years.
The Saudi national was a leading figure in Saudi Aramco's initial public offering in 2019, the biggest ever share sale that raised almost $30 billion.