Spain to sign $2.2B deal to sell warships to Saudi Arabia
MADRID — Spain was due to sign a framework deal to sell Saudi Arabia warships worth around 1.8 billion euros ($2.2 billion) on Thursday, a Spanish Defence Ministry source said.
Under the agreement, Spanish state-owned shipbuilder Navantia will sell five small warships, Spain’s army will train Saudi military personnel and contractors will build a naval construction centre in the kingdom, the source said. The deal will be signed in Madrid, where Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is on a state visit, the source added. An industry official confirmed the details of the agreement, though Navantia declined to comment.
Prince Mohammed, who serves as defence minister and controls economic and energy policy, was welcomed by Spain’s King Felipe VI at the Zarzuela palace on the outskirts of Madrid.
He also met Defence Minister Maria Dolores de Cospedal, and lunched at the royal palace with Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.
The two sides have been negotiating the warship deal since 2015, and the final agreement between the Saudi defence ministry and Navantia would take longer to complete, the ministry source said.
Prince Mohammed arrived in Spain late on Wednesday hot on the heels of a three-day official visit to France and after a tour lasting several weeks of Egypt, the United States and Britain that saw the prince sign multimillion-dollar deals.
Madrid is the last stop of his global diplomatic charm offensive in a bid to project a new liberal image of his conservative kingdom.
Top-selling daily newspaper El Pais reported earlier this week that Spain would likely make progress during his visit on a deal to sell five corvettes warships to Saudi Arabia for around two billion euros ($2.5 billion). “The signing of this memorandum of understanding (on defence) can be a step in that direction,” a Spanish government source said.
Spanish firms have already won two major infrastructure contracts in Saudi Arabia in recent years.
A Spanish consortium, Al Shoula, is building a high-speed railway across the desert to link the holy cities of Makkah and Madinah while Spanish construction group FCC leads one of three consortia building a rapid transit system in the Saudi capital.