The Qatif municipality is processing offers for establishing 12 new grocery markets selling vegetables, fruit and meat across the region’s towns and villages.

It will also establish a popular handicrafts market for local products and plans a SR 30 million central fish market project to be constructed on an area of 120,000 square meters, said Khaled Al-Dossary, head of the municipality, while hosting Eastern Province Mayor Fahd bin Muhammad Al-Jubair, who was on an inspection tour of the region’s pending and completed projects.

The fish market, projected to be the largest in the Arabian Gulf area, with service and infrastructure utilities, will attract investors and generate revenues for the municipality.

The municipality is also working on a project to have certain municipal services available online through an electronic network linking branches to one another.

Qatif’s share of the state budget this year includes 17 projects awarded to national companies with contracts worth more than SR 350 million.

The projects include real estate development of municipal lands, infrastructure facilities, road construction and restoration, in addition to the construction of new parks and maintenance of existing ones and the maintenance of government buildings and water draining projects.

Al-Dossary said that the nearly SR 78 million third-bridge project in Tarout Island is 33 percent complete, while the SR 56 million Ohud Bridge, which connects Qatif Corniche’s northern and southern banks, is completed.

Several seafront projects, including pavements and facilities, are being completed in Saihat, Qatif and Tarout Island. Other projects to light up streets and replace old light poles are under way in most of the areas in Qatif, including villages.