Riyadh, Saudi Arabia—The import of plastic products into Saudi Arabia has shot up 18 percent to 456,000 tons in the second quarter of the current year as against 386,000 tons during the same period of last year.
According to the General Authority for Statistics, the increase in imports was fueled by a 45 percent yearly rise in imports from China.
There was also a 12 percent increase in rubber products from 152,000 to 170,000 units over the same period, pushed by a 14 percent increase in imports from China.
While the rise in the Kingdom’s plastic imports has been the highest since the second quarter of 2019, rubber has increased the most since the third quarter of 2019.
The total plastic and rubber imports grew 19 percent to $1.89 billion in the second quarter of 2022.
However, this has not been the case in the second quarter of 2022, as the value of imported plastics shot up from 15 percent to 31 percent year on year compared to the 18 percent growth in rubber.
Spanning the data for the three years from the second quarter of 2019 to the second quarter of 2022, the value of plastics imports surged 40 percent while its volume increased by only 12 percent.