New Salwa Border crossing to spur Saudi-Qatari trade

Prince Saud bin Naif, emir of the Eastern Province, inaugurated on Monday the new expanded Salwa border crossing with Qatar.

The inaugural ceremony was held in the presence of Governor of Al-Ahsa Prince Saud bin Talal bin Badr, and Director General of Saudi Passports (Jawazat) Lt. Gen. Suleiman Al-Yahya.

Saudi Arabia started trial operations of a new border. The new Salwa border crossing would primarily contribute to enhancing the vehicles and passengers traffic, in addition to promoting trade and economic relations between Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

The emir witnessed the trial operation of the passenger section at the new border facility. The border crossing has been expanded by four times of its previous capacity and now it can accommodate 12,000 cars in each direction per day. The capacity of vehicles per day before the completion of the expansion works stood at 3,000.

In his speech, Governor of the Zakat, Tax and Customs Authority, Eng. Suhail Abanmi said, “The new Salwa port project comes as an extension of what the authority seeks to accomplish towards achieving one of the most important objectives of the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 by transforming the Kingdom into a global logistics platform that exploits its strategic location linking the three continents of Africa, Asia and Europe, by developing the infrastructure of land ports in the Kingdom.”