Marine Transportation

Saudi Arabia has taken advantage of its extensive coastline for the nation's industrial development. The Kingdom has enlarged and modernized its 21 ports considerably in recent years, particularly the five major ones located at Jeddah, Dammam, Yanbu, Jizan and Jubail. The Ports Authority operates all the Kingdom's ports, supplying equipment and building piers, but in 1999 a large part of the maintenance sector was privatized.

The main focus has been to expand and improve existing ports and to make cargo handling more efficient. Presently, close to 200 berths at the nation's ports offer prompt service with the most advanced cargo handling equipment. Each berth now handles a greater amount of cargo than in the past.

The Islamic Port of Jeddah, one of the principal ports in the Middle East, handles more than half of the Kingdom's sea traffic. The 58 wharves each accommodate 1,270 tons of goods daily. New port facilities have also been built at Yanbu Industrial City on the Red Sea, both to ease the load at Jeddah and to handle petrochemical exports. At the same time, ports for fishing boats and small freighters have also been constructed or upgraded. In the late 1990s, a private tourism company established hydrofoil service based in Jeddah that links several industrial and urban centers along the Red Sea.