Under the patronage of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Eng. Khalid bin Abdulaziz Al-Faleh, Minister of Energy, Industry and Mineral Resources, today opened the 14th Arab international mineral wealth conference and the special exhibition held on its sidelines at Hilton hotel in Jeddah. In a key address, Al-Faleh, who chairs the three-day event titled "Arab mineral resources: strategic resources and promising investment opportunities", said the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia provides support for the Arab cooperation and solidarity in general and the mining sector as well as the Arab Organization for Industrial and Mining Development in particular, citing that the Kingdom has undertaken the job of preparing the first geological mining map for the Arab world, taken part in conducting sector and technical studies and numbering geological and mineral maps of the Arab world, hosted two previous sessions of this conference, organized a number of symposia and technical workshops and held Arab cadres training courses over the past years. He expressed hope that this conference's papers would attract local and foreign investors in the fields of mining and minerals. He confirmed that the Arab world is rich of its minerals, the first base for basic and transformative industries. Al-Faleh summarized the most key requirements for moving from the current classical minerals industry to a giant boost of basic and transformation mineral industry of the Arab minerals sector as updating mineral investment systems, encouraging the establishment of transformative industries to achieve the highest added value, establishing specialized mineral industries cities, providing soft financing programs for the mineral sector, seeking to replace imported products by locally-manufactured ones, developing remote areas through establishing mineral industries in the vicinity of the raw materials mining sites, training of Arab technical cadres, providing protection for the mineral sites and reserving them for investors, introducing best systems and sustainable regulations for excavation operations, developing and operation aiming to protect environment and guarantee safety.
