Saudi Arabia’s Kingdom Tower, the over one-kilometre-tall skyscraper which will replace Dubai’s 828-m-tall Burj Khalifa as the tallest tower in the world, will be completed in 2018, said a top official.

The work on the 1,008-m Kingdom Tower, which will be built north of Jeddah at an estimated cost of SR6 billion ($1.6 billion), will be ready in December 2018, revealed Mounib Hammoud, the CEO of Jeddah Economic Company.

Kingdom Tower ... on target.

The tower will be the nucleus of a new commercial centre to the north of Jeddah. The first phase of the hub will cover 1.4 million sq m and will include the tower, a mall, a large mosque for 12,000 worshippers, together with other residential and commercial buildings.

In February 2013, a joint venture of the UK-based EC Harris/Mace was awarded the project management contract to oversee the development of the tower.

The client developing the tower and the surrounding Kingdom City is Jeddah Economic Company, which said it is looking to raise about $1 billion to help fund the estimated SR13-billion ($3.46 billion) first phase, together with the SR8.7 billion ($2.31 billion) that its shareholders have provided to capitalise the company.

France’s BNP Paribas is the financial adviser for the deal and the local Alinma Bank is also assisting with the loan that will bridge the funding gap while the developer waits for revenues from land sales at Kingdom City.

According to Hammoud, the land sales and off-plan property sales are set to accelerate as soon as the construction work on the tower’s superstructure begins.