The Kingdom currently and in the future will maintain long-term large and growing domestic demand to go along with the abundance of mineral resources and competitive energy costs. Vision 2030 envisages structural reforms driven by the private sector to intensify exploration, the development of an exhaustive database of the Kingdom’s natural resources, improved licensing for extraction, capital injections into infrastructure related projects, and the creation of numerous funding mechanisms to assist in the development of the sector. Mining activities as a proportion of mining and quarrying grew at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.74 percent between 2010 and 2018. Of the top five import values by category, only base metals and articles of base metals witnessed declines as its contribution dipped from 12.4 percent in 2010 to 8.6 percent in 2018, a CAGR of -1.62 percent. Export of base metals represented the third largest category by value in 2018 as exports grew from 5.6 percent of total non-oil exports in 2010 to 8.7 percent in 2018. Furthermore, exports of base metals grew by a CAGR of 13.9 percent versus 7.3 percent for total non-oil exports during the same period.
