"Saudi Arabia aims to liberalize its power industry beginning with the privatization of the electricity sector by 2014, experts attending the MEED Saudi Mega Infrastructure Projects Summit said. The privatization move aims to create a competitive market for electricity generation in Saudi Arabia, where at present the Saudi Electricity Company (SEC), which is majority owned by the government, generates, transfers and distributes electricity on a national basis. The restructuring will involve dividing SEC's electricity generation business into similar companies that will compete with each other and SEC's independent power providers (IPPs). The SEC will also set up a single buyer of electricity from the four electricity generation companies and the IPPs. A single separate transmission company has already been established and has been in operation since January 2012. "We are working now at establishing four generation companies and one distribution company by 2014," said Amer Al Swaha, head of SEC's IPP program said. "The four generation companies will have similar capacity and technology and will not be based on geographic region. They will all have the same starting point. This will allow us to compare their relative performance.""

Click here to read the full article on Saudi Gazette