Officials at the former Ministry of Industry and Electricity kept telling us the Kingdom would need more than SR400 billion for its electrical projects over the next 20 years. I always considered this to be an extraordinary figure — coming from who-knows-where. It defies all logic when compared to what we in fact spent earlier when the entire country was transformed into a huge workshop.

The statements remained buried until the responsibility for the ministry was taken over by Dr. Ghazi Al-Gosaibi. I was thus surprised when I recently came across a newspaper interview with Dr. Al-Gosaibi in which the same old statements were once again trotted out.

According to the minister, future power projects will require SR340 billion, a little less than the previous estimate but still an astronomical figure. It is in fact a figure hard to believe in comparison to past and present investments to say nothing of our past and present economic conditions. I don’t mean to say that we will not need money to develop and expand the sector but I think the matter needs further explanation and clarification so that the public can understand what it all means.

How can it be that we will need SR340 billion over the next 20 years while what we needed over the past 50 years for electricity was SR24 billion? How can we be convinced that we will need so much money while we spend smaller amounts to drive a massive development campaign, the likes of which has seldom been known anywhere?

With that smaller sum of money we were able to provide electricity for the industrial cities built all over the country, not to mention other huge projects such as the Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC).

Suppose we need all those funds as we are told we do. Where is the money coming from? Over the past 50 years which include the boom years, we managed to provide some SR30 billion for the electricity sector. Now — and under prevailing economic circumstances — can we provide SR430 billion? A hard question to answer.

The minister said the funds could come from the private sector plus foreign investments. Suppose the annual return from future projects, when completed, will be SR150 billion against the current SR15 billion generated from consumption. Who will guarantee that after 20 years, subscribers will be able to provide the SR150 billion? This amount is almost equal to the country’s budget.