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Water sector braces for likely slowdown

27 December 2024

 

Geopolitical tensions, climate change and higher-than-average population growth have exacerbated the water demand and supply gap across the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region, home to some of the world’s most water-stressed countries.

For example, Jordan, where available water per capita is equivalent to only 12% of the absolute water scarcity level, hosts over 700,000 refugees fleeing wars and conflicts in neighbouring countries.

Most regional governments have developed and started to implement water strategies aimed at narrowing this gap. Subsidies are being phased out, environmental campaigns are being developed and digital solutions are being deployed in order to manage demand and improve efficiency.

Expanding desalination and treatment capacity, increasing treated sewage effluent (TSE) reuse, boosting reservoir capacity and building more efficient transmission and distribution networks are key levers used to improve supply.

Strong spending 

These efforts have prompted significant capital spending on more energy-efficient water production, distribution and storage facilities, typically in partnership with private investors, particularly among the more affluent states.

According to data from regional projects tracker MEED Projects, the Mena region awarded $17bn of project contracts across the water desalination, treatment, transmission and distribution, storage and district cooling subsectors in the first nine months of 2024.

This figure represents about 72% of the contracts awarded in 2023 and is slightly above the average value of annual contract awards in the preceding five years.

With only a few more packages expected to be awarded before the end of the year, 2024 looks set to be one of the best years so far in terms of water project activity, even if it fails to match the record value of contracts awarded in 2023, which reached almost $24bn.

In 2024, Saudi gigaproject developer Neom set the pace in January by awarding a $4.7bn contract to build dams at the Trojena Mountain Resort in Tabuk to Italian contractor WeBuild. 

The contract covers the construction of three dams that will form a freshwater lake for the Trojena ski resort. The main dam will have a height of 145 metres and will be 475 metres long at its crest. It will be built using 2.7 million cubic metres of roller compact concrete.

While this project does not necessarily belong to the band of solutions that aim to narrow the water supply and demand gap, the overall development is part of Saudi Arabia’s drive to boost tourism and diversify its economy away from oil.

Meanwhile, 2024 also saw the award by UAE northern emirate utility Sharjah Electricity, Water & Gas Authority of the contract to develop its first independent water project (IWP), the 400,000 cubic-metres-a-day facility in Hamriyah, to Saudi utility developer Acwa Power, the contract’s sole bidder.

In May, Saudi Arabia’s National Water Company announced that it had completed the award of 10 contracts under the first phase of its privatisation programme. Each rehabilitate, operate and transfer contract involves the retrofitting or expansion of existing sewage treatment plants and associated network, and their long-term operation and management. The facilities are expected to deliver water at the TSE level for irrigation reuse.

On the greenfield sewage treatment front, Saudi Water Partnership Company (SWPC) awarded a $400m contract to develop the Al-Haer independent sewage treatment plant (ISTP) project to a team comprising the local Miahona Company and Belgium’s Besix. The facility is the largest and first to be tendered under the third round of the water offtaker’s ISTP procurement programme.

In September, Chennai-headquartered VA Tech Wabag confirmed it had won a $317m contract to build the Ras Al-Khair seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) facility in Saudi Arabia using an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) model. The project client is Saudi Water Authority (SWA), formerly Saline Water Conversion Corporation.

In Oman, Nama Water Services awarded two water distribution network packages, worth a combined $600m, catering to Al-Dhahirah Governorate.

Jordan also appointed a team comprising Paris-based Meridiam, Suez and Vinci Construction Grands Projets, along with Egypt’s Orascom Construction, for the contract to develop the Aqaba-Amman water conveyance and desalination scheme. It is the country’s largest infrastructure project to date and the first phase is valued at an estimated $2bn-$3bn.

The project is crucial to addressing Jordan’s severe water shortage problem, piping desalinated water over 445 kilometres from the southern Red Sea coast to the country’s northern regions. The consortium is talking to lenders and aims to reach financial close for the project in 2025.

Slower momentum

Despite 2024 being a good year for contract awards, it fell short of the expectation built over the past few years, when the region’s largest economies began to execute their long-term water strategies.

For example, in Saudi Arabia, the years-long restructuring of the domestic water sector took a significant turn in 2024, with Water Transmission Company (WTCO), the kingdom’s licensed desalinated water transmission operator, gaining a broader portfolio of projects. As a result, the mandate to procure upcoming water transmission pipelines has been transferred to WTCO from SWPC.

The slower pace of IWP contract awards in Saudi Arabia was somewhat offset by a slew of tenders from SWA. The authority received bids for the EPC contracts to build four SWRO facilities in 2024, although as of November it had only managed to award one.

Earlier in 2024, Saudi gigaproject developer Neom also shelved a project to develop a zero-liquid discharge (ZLD) SWRO plant.

“The year may not have been as strong as 2023, but it is still a good year,” says Robert Bryniak, CEO of Dubai-based Golden Sands Management (Marketing) Consulting. “Some projects have been delayed or cancelled – for instance a few in Saudi Arabia – but all in all [2024 has been] a good year for the water business.”

Bryniak adds that Neom’s ZLD scheme is one of the year’s shelved projects that he would like to see revived in the future.

Beyond the GCC states, Morocco and Egypt are endeavouring to move their planned SWRO projects into the tendering phase.

In Morocco, Office National de L’Electricite et de L’Eue Potable (Onee) extended the review of its second IWP in Nador while waiting for its first IWP in Casablanca to reach financial close.

The first batch of renewable energy- powered desalination plants in Egypt has yet to reach the proposals stage despite the Sovereign Fund of Egypt having completed the bid prequalification process in 2023.

Potential contract awards

According to data from MEED Projects, an estimated $34bn-worth of water projects are in the tendering stage across the Mena region. A further $40bn-worth is in the prequalification stage and $57bn is in the design and study phases.

The $22bn Dubai Strategic Sewerage Tunnels (DSST) scheme stands out among the upcoming projects due to its scale, as well as for the chosen procurement approach.

The project aims to convert Dubai’s existing sewerage network from a pumped system to a gravity system by decommissioning the existing pump stations and providing a sustainable and reliable service that is fit for the future.

In April, Dubai Municipality launched the procurement process for the DSST project, which is to be developed as a public-private partnership (PPP).

While a dose of pessimism persists over the chosen PPP model – in part due to the project’s scale and strong civil works orientation, and Dubai’s dismal track record in procuring PPP schemes outside the utility sector – the project has managed to attract strong interest from EPC contractors, as well as from potential investors and sponsors.

Some of those that have sought to prequalify as investors, such as Begium’s Besix, Beijing-headquartered China Railway Construction Corporation and South Korea’s Samsung C&T, have previously been prequalified as EPC contractors for the DSST project, which suggests that the preferred approach of prequalifying EPCs ahead of investors could offer advantages.

In Saudi Arabia, WTCO, SWA, SWPC and Neom’s utility subsidiary Enowa are each expected to let several contracts in 2025, while Bahrain and Abu Dhabi could award one IWP contract each.  

However, a robust overall pipeline does not necessarily guarantee that 2025 will resemble the upward trajectory that the sector has seen in the past two years.

“This year could be a turning point for the water industry throughout Mena,” says Bryniak, alluding to the possibility that, come January, the foreign and climate policies of the new occupant of the White House could affect the trend of water production capacity buildout in the Mena region.

Bryniak says that if US President-elect Donald Trump follows through with his promises, then we may be in store for, among other events, lower energy prices as the US drills more oil; a dampening of world trade as the US places tariffs on imports, especially on Chinese goods and services; less focus on the environment; and, generally, a more isolationist America.

“In my view, much depends on how much oil prices fall,” he continues. 

“A significant drop in oil prices could result in cut-backs in a lot of development projects, and this, in turn, will adversely impact water demand and the overall build programme.”  

However, the impact will not be uniform across asset types and procurement models, Bryniak notes. He expects water PPP projects to continue to grow, especially if capital availability is reduced by lower oil prices, as this is one way to preserve capital for use in other areas. 

“I do not see any reason for tariffs to fall further in 2025. Tariffs, in my view, will remain roughly where they are now or increase slightly,” adds Bryniak.  

However, the executive says that EPC contracts will likely have “a higher opportunity cost”, so there might be a reduced focus on this type of procurement model.  

He concludes: “To the extent that development projects get trimmed down due to less capital being available as a result of significantly lower oil prices, then water procurers and other developers will likely scale back their projects.”

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Jennifer Aguinaldo

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    Emirates and Etihad Airways both moved to address the insurance gap directly ahead of the FCDO change. On 17 June, Emirates launched a comprehensive travel cover product developed in partnership with insurance provider Travel Guard, offering medical cover for conflict-related incidents, trip cancellation cover, compensation for baggage delay or loss, and unlimited medical expense and emergency evacuation cover worldwide. The product is available across 27 markets.

    Emirates also committed to rebooking disrupted customers at no additional cost where flights have been cancelled due to conflict-related disruption, including itineraries connecting on other carriers.

    Arrivals data

    Data from UK-based analytics firm GlobalData illustrates both the scale of the expected contraction and the strength of the projected recovery. UAE international arrivals, which reached approximately 30 million in 2025, are forecast to fall to about 26.4 million in 2026 – a decline of roughly 12% – before rebounding sharply to 32.1 million in 2027. 

    GlobalData’s projections then show continued growth to about 33.5 million in 2028, 35.1 million in 2029 and 36.6 million by 2030. 

    On that trajectory, arrivals would exceed pre-conflict levels within a single year of recovery and surpass 2025 figures by more than 7% in 2027 alone.

    The GlobalData numbers place the 2026 contraction in a longer historical context. UAE arrivals grew almost uninterrupted from 8.4 million in 2009 to 25.6 million in 2019, before collapsing to 8.4 million in 2020 at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. The subsequent recovery was among the fastest recorded for any major destination: arrivals reached 22 million in 2022, crossed 26.3 million in 2023 and climbed to 28.7 million in 2024 before the 2025 peak. 

    That precedent – a two-thirds collapse followed by full recovery within three years – underpins the confidence embedded in GlobalData’s post-conflict forecast, which projects a return to growth momentum by 2027 and a trajectory that would deliver 36.6 million arrivals by 2030.

    The near-term contraction nevertheless remains substantial. A decline from approximately 30 million to 26.4 million in a single year represents the sharpest drop in UAE arrivals outside the pandemic, and it comes at a point when the sector had been tracking well ahead of pre-pandemic levels.

    Past experience

    Historical precedent from comparable disruptions points to a consistent pattern: recovery shape is determined less by the severity of the initial decline than by the duration of the disrupting event and the speed at which the perception of the source market resets.

    Single-event incidents with clear endpoints and no sustained security overhang have historically produced the fastest recoveries, with arrivals returning to trend within 12 months. Sustained conflicts or events that trigger prolonged travel advisory regimes produce more extended recovery arcs, with source market confidence rather than operational conditions defining the timeline. 

    The Egypt Metrojet bombing in 2015 remains the most instructive cautionary example for the Gulf: Russian airspace restrictions imposed after the incident kept a major source market out of the Egyptian market for more than five years, with arrivals recovery lagging the resolution of the underlying security concern by a significant margin.

    The UAE’s own Covid recovery offers a relevant local reference point. The GlobalData numbers show arrivals collapsed from 25.6 million in 2019 to 8.4 million in 2020, before recovering to 21.9 million in 2022 and surpassing pre-pandemic levels by 2023. The post-conflict recovery forecast of a bounce back to above 2025 levels by 2027 is less aggressive than the post-Covid rebound, reflecting both the more moderate scale of the 2026 contraction and the more complex advisory and perception dynamics involved in a conflict resolution scenario.

    The DET’s response is structured around three priorities: operational continuity, sector support and market confidence. The government announced a AED2.5bn ($612.7m) support package targeting the tourism, hospitality and entertainment sectors, structured to protect business continuity, preserve employment and maintain visitor experience standards. Dubai is doing all it can, but much depends on how quickly perceptions shift.

    Pilgrimages drive Saudi tourism

    More than 1.7 million pilgrims performed Hajj in 2026, according to official data published by Saudi Arabia’s General Authority for Statistics, underscoring the continued centrality of religious tourism to the kingdom’s visitor economy.

    The total of 1,707,301 pilgrims comprised 1,546,655 from outside the kingdom and 160,646 internal pilgrims, which includes Saudi citizens and residents. 

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    Hajj is a structural pillar of Saudi religious tourism, which alongside Umrah, draws tens of millions of visitors to Mecca and Medina each year. The sector sits at the core of Vision 2030’s tourism diversification strategy, which targets 150 million visits a year by the end of the decade. 

    Continued investment in transport infrastructure, including the expanded King Abdulaziz International airport and Haramain high-speed railway capacity, will help Riyadh achieve this target.

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    Colin Foreman