Minister of Industry and Mineral Resources, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Local Content and Government Procurement Authority, Bandar bin Ibrahim AlKhorayef, inaugurated today the first edition of the Local Content Forum. In a speech delivered at the opening ceremony, AlKhorayef said that the Kingdom's vision 2030 came with ambitious aspirations, and requires a unique business model that makes it difficult to achieve the goals of this vision by traditional methods, hence, it was necessary to adopt bold and qualitative concepts; (the "local content"), which was adopted by the Kingdom's vision to be a real possibility to achieve the objectives of sectors related to economic diversification, and represents a comprehensive umbrella under which several important elements fall, including products and services, human resources, training, and technology, to maximize the economic impact of the Kingdom's industry, services and natural wealth. "To consolidate this concept and maximize the benefit from it, the Local Content and Government Procurement Authority was established, and the new government tenders and procurement regulation was approved," the minister said, adding that the development of local content requires an integrated action by combining the efforts of various government agencies, partners from the private sector, and society. At the government level, the minister noted that the cabinet approved the formation of local content development teams in government agencies to ensure unification of efforts and joint work with agencies to achieve the goals. Moreover, 270 teams were formed to work on achieving the local content agenda in all government sectors, and efforts are being made in this file to create a solid and strong economy, said the minister. AlKhorayef revealed that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, since started implementing the legislations aimed at developing local content in 2020 until the end of the first half of 2022, has achieved many gains, adding that the estimated value of government tenders to which the requirements of local content and localization apply amounted to nearly SR300 billion, through which private sector facilities and national factories were enabled to be the first option for government spending, and the percentage of local content amounted to 46% of the total spending of companies members of the Council on goods and services for the year 2020, with an estimated value of SR113 billion, in addition to enabling national factories, through the mandatory list of national products, from which about 4000 factories will benefit, with an impact on the national economy of more than SR20 billion. The Local Content Forum is one of the strategic initiatives of the Local Content and Government Procurement Authority and aims to be a platform for raising awareness, exchanging experiences, and empowering local capabilities, by activating partnerships and investment opportunities.
