On the evening of the 10th Beijing time, Saudi Arabia's official sources said on Wednesday that the country had almost doubled its estimate of the value of its mineral resources and signed a lucrative deal at the Future Minerals Forum (Future Minerals Forum) in Riyadh this week.
Saudi Minister of Mineral Resources and Industry Bandar Al Khorayef said Saudi untapped mineral reserves are estimated to have jumped from $1.3 trillion predicted in 2016 to $2.5 trillion. These resources, which include gold, copper, phosphate, and rare earth elements, have provided the country with a new underground source of wealth in addition to Saudi Arabia's huge oil reserves.
Al Khorayef said: “We are very excited about this news... it is indeed the result of our work over the past four years.”
The Saudi government announced it will sign a $20 billion deal at the annual mining forum, and the Minister of Mines praised recent reforms to Saudi law and business practices as the key to this windfall.
Al Khorayef said: “The revision of our investment law has helped to make significant investments. The number of licenses we have issued in the past two years is around 4,500.”
He said, “In addition, we have invested a lot of money in the geological survey program. These two things alone enable us to obtain information and data on reserves of various mineral deposits. The digital mix of newly discovered deposits is quite beautiful, especially rare earth metals, and the many more deposits we know, such as phosphate, gold, copper, zinc, etc. So it's a combination of all of these things.”
The minister stated that these figures “are based on only 30% of Arab shield exploration, and the scope of such exploration is expected to continue to increase to 100%.”
The Arabian-Nubian shield (Arabian-Nubian shield) is a large precambrian rock crust spanning the western Arabian Peninsula and northeastern Africa, and has been a hot spot for mining activities and exploration for thousands of years.
Saudi Arabia announced at the forum that it has developed 33 new mining exploration sites and plans to issue more than 30 mining exploration licenses to foreign investors in 2024.