The Saline Water Conversion Corporation (SWCC) will be privatized as a holding company with consolidated production companies to be composed of the six existing desalination plants, an official of the corporation said here Monday. “As a holding company, SWCC will be operating like the Saudi Arabian Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC) with the six desalination plants to be converted as affiliated companies,” said Khalid M. Al-Monifi, manager of industrial and public relations department of SWCC. He said the SWCC desalination plants in Jeddah, Yanbu Al-Shuiba, Al-Shugaig, Al-Khobar and Jubail, will be offered to local and international investors through independent water and power projects (IWPPs) model. “Investors will then be able to select from the offered six IWPPs,” he said. The value of SWCC privatization is now estimated to be around SR73 billion, according to Monifi. The privatization scheme of SWCC is now on its fifth to seventh stages of its seven-stage privatization plan, he said. The corporation is now on the stage of preparing structures and procedures for privatization, approval of the tariffs, issuing of the decree, and preparing request for proposals for investors. “We hope to launch the privatization before the end of this year,” Monifi said. The SWCC's total production of potable water from its 15 desalination plants (including the six major plants and nine satellite plants) in the Western and East coasts of the Kingdom is 1.032 billion cubic meters, of which 517.9 million cubic meters is generated from Eastern Province and 515 million cubic meters from the Western Coast. Four international consultants that respectively provided the strategic, technical, financial, and legal were engaged by SWCC. Officials and employees of SWCC are now preparing themselves to embrace the change in the corporation's management from a purely government entity to a private business sector, according to Monifi. SWCC board of director is presently chaired by Abdullah bin Abdulrahman Al Hussayen, Minister of Water & Electricity. The vice chairman and also governor of SWCC is Feheid bin Fahd Alshareef. There are other seven members of the board representing the ministries of economy and planning, water and electricity, municipal and rural affairs, mineral resources, finance and private business. __
