Industrial land should only be sold to those investors who will use it for officially zoned commercial activity. An industrial zone booked for a certain industrial activity can not be used for another. This is the warning from the Director General of the Saudi Industrial Property Authority (Modon), Tawfiq Al-Rabeah, who said the authority will keep a close eye on industrial land transactions for any irregularities. Modon is responsible for developing and supervising industrial land in the Kingdom. Its mission is to regulate and promote Industrial Estates and Technology Zones in the Kingdom on both public and private industrial land. Al-Rabeah said factories and projects involved in the same industrial sector have to be set up in one zone. He warned businessmen that the authority is also opposed to the sale of projects that have been delayed. “Delayed projects will be withdrawn and the owners will be compensated after an estimation of assets by three engineering offices,” he said. Speaking at an industrialists meeting organized by the Industrial Committee of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry in the Eastern Province on Sunday, he said that Modon has allocated 300 land plots for industrial projects in the second industrial city in Dammam. He said the authority is coordinating with Saudi Aramco and the Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs to obtain a 54-million square meters of land 30 kilometers away from Bqaiq. He said talks were continuing with the Ministry of Transportation to link industrial cities by railway, and outlined the efforts of Modon to improve the infrastructure of the three-million-square-meter Industrial City 1 in Dammam. This includes SR250 million worth of contracts to rebuild infrastructure within a year. The authority is also working on solving the Industrial City 2's water and infrastructure problem with the SR200 million third, fourth and fifth stages of development projects. He said the main gates and entrances will be demolished to build new larger ones. A project worth SR350 million, to link the city to Riyadh Road, has been put up for tender, he said. He added that the authority had also finalized SR500 million worth of contracts to tackle sewage in the cities, improve infrastructure and connect the sewage network to the industrial cities' housing. It also signed a contract worth SR105 million to deliver gas to industrial cities' factories, noting the total amount of allocations for the second industrial city will reach SR1,500 million within the next three years. Deputy Minister of Commerce and Industry for Industrial Affairs, Khaled Al-Sulaiman, meanwhile said the ministry does not differentiate between men and women in terms of handing out permits for industrial projects.
