Saudi Arabia targeting 330mln airline passengers a year by 2030: GACA chief

JEDDAH — Saudi Arabia is planning to raise the capacity of its airports to serve 330 million passengers annually by 2030 as compared to 103 million passengers currently, according to the Kingdom’s civil aviation authority chief.

Speaking during a press conference on Monday to discuss the recently launched National Strategy for Transport and Logistics, the president of the General Authority of Civil Aviation Abdulaziz Al-Duailej also said that as part of the strategy there are plans to increase air connectivity to 250 international destinations.

The press conference was also attended by Minister of Transport and Logistics Services Saleh Al-Jasser who said that the citizen is the focus and goal of the strategy as it seeks to generate attractive jobs, directly and indirectly, improve the quality and safety of transport, provide more options for local and global mobility, and adopt the latest mobility models and improve user experience.

He also said that the strategy seeks to achieve a high level of road safety and reduce accidents by up to 50 percent.

The strategy also aims to boost the sector's contribution in partnerships with the private sector to 10 percent of the gross domestic product, the minister added.

For his part, the president of the General Authority of Ports Omar Hariri said that seaports play an important role in the movement of international trade and national industry, as more than 70 percent of the Kingdom's imports and more than 95 percent of its exports cross through ports.

Nearly 9.5 million containers were handled annually in 2020, and one of our most important goals is to increase container handling to 40 million containers annually by 2030, he added.

The strategy enables the port sector to make an optimal investment in infrastructure, expand capacity, and connect ports with different modes of transport that facilitate the transit of goods.