Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources has unveiled 27 supportive measures to meet the concerns directly influencing private industrial and mining enterprises and investors.
These measures include;
Delaying and restructuring loan payments
Generating new products to support working capital
Excusing, decreasing or delaying the payment of fees due to the ministry or its ecosystem
Extending industrial licenses expiry period and time constrains for building and commissioning new plants
Deferring previous claims of “reserved capacity” fees due
Automatically renewing industrial licenses
Renewing labor support documents and
Renewing customs exclusion and chemical clearance documents.
Supporting Initiatives for Industrial investors
Extending the time-frame for achieving the requirements of issuing and renewing licenses
Eliminating service suspensions
Excluding payments of financial consideration and fee
Changing conditional allocation notices
Prolonging investment agreements and delaying their cancelation procedures.
Supporting Initiatives for Investors in the Mining Sector
Delaying the implementation of mining licenses work programs
Prolonging the period for completion of requirements for issuing and renewing licenses
Extending the financial claim period for holders of small mines licenses, raw materials mines’ licenses, mining licenses for payment of financial dues
Extending the period of export permits and
Extending the validity period of all valid mining licenses.
Additional support measures
30% discount on electricity bills
Settlement requirement of only 50% of electricity bill dues and
Option to defer payments.
Strengthening the concept of local content and national industry.
This is accomplished through expediting the incorporation of local content demands within companies that have 51% ownership by the Public Investment Fund (PIF) in accordance with the rules and regulations of tendering and sourcing works and procurements in favor of local content. A sum of, $13.3 billion has been earmarked to expedite the settlements of the private sector dues.
The Corporate Sustainability Program Support initiative and the Project Support Fund initiative have been initiated to accelerate and mitigate loan requirements and defer their payment. These actions provide a loan scheme, permitting the private sector to secure lowered interest rate loans and payment deferrals for the year 2020.
Ministry has also targeted areas of concerns and provided support to the private sector in terms of;
Delaying the submission and remittance of tax declarations
Suspending imposition of fines and services stopping procedures,
In addition to procedures for voluntary disclosure of any undisclosed tax obligations and exemption from fines rising from that disclosure, for all taxpayers
Extending expiry of resident IDs and
Deferring the payment of commercial records fees.
The Kingdom has committed extensive efforts into its COVID-19 emergency response plan which can rival international standards.
