RIYADH — The Kingdom's total annual consumption of water amounted to about 2.5 billion cubic meters in 2012, with an average per capita consumption of about 238 liters per day. The annual consumption was 2.4 billion cubic meters in 2011, with an average per capita consumption of about 259 liters per day. The 49th annual report issued recently by the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA) pointed out that the Saline Water Conversion Corporation (SWCC) produced approximately 997.2 million cubic meters of water in 2012 compared to 1054,1 million cubic meters in 2011. It also indicated that the estimates of the average amount of water consumed in 2012 amounted to 6.9 million cubic meters per day, compared with about 6.6 million cubic meters per day in 2011, up by 4.5 percent. The report said until the end of 2012 there were 422 dams with a storage capacity of 1.97 billion cubic meters of water, compared to 394 dams in 2011, with a storage capacity 1.93 billion cubic meters of water. The SAMA report also pointed to higher sales of the Saudi Electricity Company of energy in 2012, up by 9.7 percent from 2011 to register about 240.3 million megawatt hourly, topped by residential consumption which amounted to 50.1 percent or 1.20 billion megawatt/hourly out of the total electricity consumption in the Kingdom. — SPA
