The Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority, the kingdom’s state-backed inward investment agency, is working with the World Bank to improve the country’s global ranking in terms of ease of doing business and has identified 400 reforms that could help it attract more foreign direct investment.
“We are open for business ... we are working with the World Bank to improve the Saudi position ... and become one of the top 20 countries,” Ibrahim Al Omar, the governor of Sagia, told delegates on the second day of the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh. “[About] 40 per cent of those [reforms] have been completed so far.”
The establishment of a commercial arbitration centre, allowing investors to start their business within 24 hours through Sagia’s online portal and cutting containers’ clearance time at ports from two weeks to 24 hours, are among the reforms that already been carried out, he added.
Saudi Arabia is currently ranked 92nd among 190 countries, ahead of states such as India, the Philippines, Argentina, Iran and Lebanon, according to the 2018 World Bank rankings.
Saudi Arabia, Opec’s biggest oil exporter, is diversifying its economy away from hydrocarbons, focusing on increasing the contribution of its non-oil economy by cultivating a local manufacturing industry and attracting foreign direct investment. The non-oil sector accounts for about 40 per cent of GDP at present. The collapse of oil prices in 2014 from a peak of $115 per barrel to lows of below $30 per barrel in 2016, accelerated the momentum to overhaul the economy.
The kingdom is introducing its Vision 2030 programme, the overarching blueprint of economic reform which has set the target of increasing FDI to 5.7 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product from 3.8 per cent in the next 12 years. The country also aims to increase the private sector contribution to GDP to 65 per cent from 40 per cent, and boost participation of small and medium-sized enterprises to the economy from the current 20 per cent to 35 per cent by 2030.
_______________
Read more:
On the cusp of a new era, Saudi Arabia courts the world
Saudi Arabia to return to growth next year, IMF says
PIF's new tourist investment a key part of 2030 vision
_______________
“Vision 2030 is a once-in-a-lifetime transformation and the investment is the core foundation of the vision with clear aims,” Mr Al Omar said on Wednesday. “This is a golden opportunity for all the investors to join us in our historic journey.”
The kingdom has so far managed to attract tens of billions of dollars of foreign investments into its energy sector since the first FII event in 2017. It signed investment deals and preliminary agreements worth $50bn on the first day of the investment conference, about $34bn of those going in to the energy sector alone. Riyadh, however, aims to boost investments in other sectors of the economy including industries, mining, entertainment and tourism.
Saudi Arabia has already launched ambitious projects including Neom, a $500bn futurist economic free zone being built on the western coast of the country, which will also be home to mega-tourism and leisure projects that will be open to private investments.
Sagia deals with investments in the country, identifying potential investors and helping them set up operations. The government agency has over the past two years streamlined the business licensing process to encourage investment – slashing the time to secure a licence from 53 working days to just four. Previously, eight documents were required to issue any business licence. Now a company can obtain a licence by producing only a financial statement and certified commercial registration. A company can also renew its licence through a self-service feature on Sagia’s website.
Earlier this month the International Monetary Fund said the Arab world's largest economy, which contracted 0.9 per cent last year, is set to expand 2.2 and 2.4 per cent in 2018 and 2019, higher projections than earlier forecasts. The brighter outlook is due to higher non-oil growth and an uptick in oil production as global crude output cuts that started in January last year come to an end.
88 Video's most popular rentals
Avengers 3: Infinity War: an American superhero film released in 2018 and based on the Marvel Comics story.
Sholay: a 1975 Indian action-adventure film. It follows the adventures of two criminals hired by police to catch a vagabond. The film was panned on release but is now considered a classic.
Lucifer: is a 2019 Malayalam-language action film. It dives into the gritty world of Kerala’s politics and has become one of the highest-grossing Malayalam films of all time.
Volunteers offer workers a lifeline
Community volunteers have swung into action delivering food packages and toiletries to the men.
When provisions are distributed, the men line up in long queues for packets of rice, flour, sugar, salt, pulses, milk, biscuits, shaving kits, soap and telecom cards.
Volunteers from St Mary’s Catholic Church said some workers came to the church to pray for their families and ask for assistance.
Boxes packed with essential food items were distributed to workers in the Dubai Investments Park and Ras Al Khaimah camps last week. Workers at the Sonapur camp asked for Dh1,600 towards their gas bill.
“Especially in this year of tolerance we consider ourselves privileged to be able to lend a helping hand to our needy brothers in the Actco camp," Father Lennie Connully, parish priest of St Mary’s.
Workers spoke of their helplessness, seeing children’s marriages cancelled because of lack of money going home. Others told of their misery of being unable to return home when a parent died.
“More than daily food, they are worried about not sending money home for their family,” said Kusum Dutta, a volunteer who works with the Indian consulate.
NO OTHER LAND
Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
Other must-tries
Tomato and walnut salad
A lesson in simple, seasonal eating. Wedges of tomato, chunks of cucumber, thinly sliced red onion, coriander or parsley leaves, and perhaps some fresh dill are drizzled with a crushed walnut and garlic dressing. Do consider yourself warned: if you eat this salad in Georgia during the summer months, the tomatoes will be so ripe and flavourful that every tomato you eat from that day forth will taste lacklustre in comparison.
Badrijani nigvzit
A delicious vegetarian snack or starter. It consists of thinly sliced, fried then cooled aubergine smothered with a thick and creamy walnut sauce and folded or rolled. Take note, even though it seems like you should be able to pick these morsels up with your hands, they’re not as durable as they look. A knife and fork is the way to go.
Pkhali
This healthy little dish (a nice antidote to the khachapuri) is usually made with steamed then chopped cabbage, spinach, beetroot or green beans, combined with walnuts, garlic and herbs to make a vegetable pâté or paste. The mix is then often formed into rounds, chilled in the fridge and topped with pomegranate seeds before being served.
Specs
Engine: Dual-motor all-wheel-drive electric
Range: Up to 610km
Power: 905hp
Torque: 985Nm
Price: From Dh439,000
Available: Now
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
The British in India: Three Centuries of Ambition and Experience
by David Gilmour
Allen Lane
The Brutalist
Director: Brady Corbet
Stars: Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, Guy Pearce, Joe Alwyn
Rating: 3.5/5
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
The specs
Price: From Dh180,000 (estimate)
Engine: 2.0-litre turbocharged and supercharged in-line four-cylinder
Transmission: Eight-speed automatic
Power: 320hp @ 5,700rpm
Torque: 400Nm @ 2,200rpm
Fuel economy, combined: 9.7L / 100km
