Lockheed Martin will invest more than $1 billion to localise military manufacturing in Saudi Arabia, Ray Piselli, its vice president of international business, told broadcaster Asharq Business on Tuesday.
The Saudi General Authority for Military Industries (GAMI) and Saudi Arabian Military Industries (SAMI) have plans worth hundreds of millions of dollars and Lockheed Martin will spend more than $1 billion to support Saudi Arabia's local industry, Piselli was quoted as saying.
GAMI is the kingdom's regulator for the military industry and SAMI is a state-owned defence company. Saudi Arabia has set itself ambitious targets to diversify its economy from oil, which it supplies to the West, including the United States from which it is a major buyer of weapons.
With more than $45 billion budgeted for its military spending in 2022, Saudi Arabia has placed the development of a domestic industry central to a multi-billion-dollar transformation plan initiated by the kingdom's de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, known as Vision 2030.
Piselli declined to give details of the agreement. He said Lockheed Martin looked forward to investing in many opportunities with local companies and government entities to base some of its industry in the kingdom.
On Monday, GAMI said it was working with Lockheed Martin to make some of the parts for its THAAD missile defence system.
Piselli said Lockheed Martin has big contracts with Saudi Arabia. In addition to collaboration on building parts, it wanted to include the kingdom in global supply chains and create an export market. Revenues from Gulf Arab countries reached $4 billion in 2020, he said, without giving a more recent figure.
Saud Arabia's industry minister said on Monday Riyadh attracted investment worth 81 billion riyal ($21.6 billion) in the industrial sector in 2021.
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