Saudi Arabia has approved water and farming projects worth 393 billion Saudi riyals ($105 billion) and some of them will be awarded soon, the Gulf Kingdom’s Environment, Water and Agriculture Minister was quoted on Thursday as saying.

Abdul Rahman Al-Fadli said 2,000 of the nearly 3,300 projects would cost around SAR 210 billion ($56 billion) and have already secured funds.

“Plans are underway to execute these funded projects…they will be awarded to the private sector in the near future,” Fadli told a seminar in the Eastern Ihsa Province on Wednesday, according to the Saudi daily Alriyadh.

He did not provide details apart from saying the projects include the addition of 800,000 cubic metres of water desalination plants on the Kingdom’s Eastern coastline.The projects also comprise the expansion of water supply networks in the Kingdom to more than 3.5 million cubic metres per day, he added.

(Writing by Nadim Kawach; Editing by Anoop Menon)

(anoop.menon@lseg.com)