The Board of Directors of Saudi Arabian Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC) held here on Tuesday evening a meeting under the chairmanship of Prince Saud bin Abdullah bin Thenian Al-Saud, the President of the Royal commission for Jubail and Yanbu. The participants of the meeting reviewed the performance of SABIC and its financial situation. The corporation's reserves have exceeded SR 42 billion. The board of directors approved the recommendation of the extraordinary general assembly which stipulated to give shareholders additional shares: one share for each four shares. The profits of SABIC for the first quarter of 2006 amounted to SR 4.2 billion. This figure constitutes a decrease of 17 percent to the profits of the same period last year. Deputy chairman of the board of directors and executive president Eng Mohammed al-Madi said the sales of the corporation increased in the first quarter of this year to 9.4 million tons with an increase of 14 percent compared to the sales in the same period last year. He attributed the decrease in the profits to the reduction of the prices of raw materials of liquified gas and the increase of the prices of the iron ore.
