Saudi Arabia bought 60% of Walloon weapons sold in 2015. This is per the report of the “Weapons” sub-commission of the Wallonia parliament on export licences granted or refused during the last year. Le Soir is reporting this today (Tuesday).
Wallonia has never exported so many arms to Riyadh.
Saudi Arabia has only accounted for 34 export licences of the 1,369 delivered from 68 countries across the whole of the year.
However, these contracts represent a total of 575.8 million euros, or 60% of global Walloon turnover within the sector (having a total of 955 million euros), the daily newspaper states.
This has triggered a new record, the previous one being attained with sales of 396.9 million euros in weapons sales to Riyadh in 2014.
Additional purchases from other Middle Eastern countries, (United Arab Emirates for a total of 19.3 million euros and Oman for a total of 15.76 millions) constituted 65% of overall Walloon weapons exports.
The detailed breakdown of arms exports to Saudi Arabia, involved in the Yemen conflict in 2015 concerned fire arms (396 million euros), canons or mortars (7.6 millions euros), ammunition (105 million euros), rockets (5.18 million euros) and tanks and armoured vehicles or spare parts (58 million euros).
The Brussels Times
