Saudi Arabia awards $300m housing contract to Turkey

Saudi Arabia’s oil company, Aramco, has awarded a $300 million housing construction project to a Turkish company.

Turkey’s Kolin construction company is to work on Aramco’s housing project in the eastern province of Dhahran, according to Middle East Business Intelligence. The company will develop the South Dhahran Home Ownership Programme (SDHOP), known as “Ajyal” which has been allocated a budget of $5.5 billion. No other information has been given on construction partners.

The works began late last month and are contracted to go on for 1,430 days and provide 2,400 state of the art villas for Saudi Aramco employees.

Turkey, a staunch supporter of Qatar, air-lifted essential basics and amenities to Doha following a Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain and Egypt levied air, land and sea blockade on the small Gulf country in June 2017. It all started following allegations of support for “terrorism” and “extremism” which Qatar continues to categorically deny. Since then, the Arab world has been divided in to two camps, the Saudi and UAE pro-blockade bloc or Qatar and Turkey.

Following Saudi’s Vision 2030 which sees the Kingdom reduce its dependence on petrodollars, Aramco will soon float its shares in the stock market. Both the London and New York stock markets have been fighting hard to attract has been billed as the biggest stock market sale.