A number of US companies have signed agreements with Saudi companies for projects related to solar energy, health care, housing and employment.
According to sources quoted by Asharq Al-Awsat, a sister publication of Arab News, American companies are also negotiating with a number of real estate development companies in the Kingdom in order to provide new solutions to solve the current housing crisis.
Saudi companies are looking to these American companies for their experience and resources in this area, given their status as global leaders in overcoming economic and financial constraints affecting many countries, as well as their reliance on a housing construction model that is both cheap and fast to implement.
Suhair Al-Darraj, an economic expert, said the Kingdom will see a substantial economic transformation as per the directives of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman to the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, and the Investment Authority, to restudy commercial regulations and encourage the role of global companies in the Saudi market.
“Opening the market to global companies is an encouraging step and this also applies to opening the Saudi stock market to direct foreign investment,” he said.
“This all proves the Kingdom will be more economically open, and we will see Saudi stocks on the Morgan Stanley Index for emerging markets in the coming period.”
He said the Saudi market is an attractive market for many global companies due to the high demand and high consumer purchasing power, said Al-Darraj, noting that restaurant, technology and automobile companies will be more present and invest heavily in the Saudi market.
According to Abdul Mohsin Al-Majnooni of the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (SAGIA), the decisions and agreements announced at the US-Saudi Investment Forum in Washington last week demonstrate the need to facilitate the arrival and participation of foreign companies in the Kingdom.
He attributed the forum’s success to the broad participation of official and government authorities, as well as private Saudi and US companies and businessmen, leading to a number of fruitful agreements across various sectors.
“Most of these agreements were based on investment cooperation, exchanging technologies and experiences, and providing new job opportunities for the Saudi workforce,” said Al-Majnooni.
“Eight US companies announced during the forum that they took more than 250,000 beneficiaries of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Scholarship Program, who had studied at US universities in various fields,” he said.
A number of other cooperative agreements were signed between various companies for the establishment of new projects and initiatives in the field of nuclear medicine, solar energy, aircraft manufacturing, accommodations, research, engineering, online commerce, real estate development and investment, and other fields.
