Riyadh – Mubasher: Saudi Arabia’s government has launched a new initiative “We build the nation with a vision moving against time” in a step to transform the Saudi construction sector from a sector that relies on traditional methods of construction to one that utilizes advanced construction methods.

The new building technology stimulus initiative provides local and foreign investors with various financial products and solutions to facilitate the set-up of building technology factories, according to a recent statement by the Saudi Ministry of Housing.

These solutions include providing financial incentives with the support of the Private Sector Stimulus Plan through the Saudi Industrial Development Fund for direct financing up to 75% of the required investments and to 6 months of working capital.

The newly launched initiative aims to build human competencies and enable contractors to use modern construction methods.

The initiative, which targets citizens of different social standards, offers affordable building solutions with a variety of high quality, modern designs at competitive prices.

“Through opening up channels of cooperation with local and international partners, the initiative strives to cope with Industrial 4.0, through discovering advanced materials, and providing development and innovation centres to play a huge role in these technologies,” the ministry said.

In addition, the initiative eyes creating thousands of job opportunities, and raising the local contribution share in the gross domestic product (GDP) to reach SAR 80 billion.

It also aims at reducing the construction time to less than 90 days, deducting the construction costs by 5-20%, and raising the production capacity of building technology factories across the kingdom.

It is worth mentioning that the financing of 21 building technology factories is currently underway with a capital exceeding SAR 1.2 billion with an aim to raise the production capacity to build more than 30,000 housing units.