So you are saying that 25 million locals (in reality approaching 30 million - the number will only continue to grow) can fit into a small part of the Tabuk Province the size of 26,500 sq km? In such a case KSA would be the most densely populated country or one of them and basically approaching South Asian levels! Thank God that KSA is the 12th largest country in the world and that we will always have plenty of wonderful wild nature and space.
Keep dreaming. Tiny Israel plays no role when it comes to NEOM although NEOM alone will be a bigger and much more beautiful than your pariah state.
Cornelia Meyer | Published — Thursday 26 October 2017
New Saudi undertaking is of epic proportions
Earlier this week, the great and the good congregated in Riyadh at the Future Investment Initiative (FII) Summit to deliberate the role of sovereign wealth in driving the next wave of business, innovation, technology and investment. The event was hosted under the patronage of King Salman.
So plentiful and senior was the participation that the conference was dubbed “Davos in the Desert.” Like Davos, Bloomberg, CNBC and co were busy airing interviews with senior business leaders, who explained their corporate strategies.
It was another opportunity for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to present Vision 2030 to the world’s most important economic players. The CEO of the Kingdom’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), Yasir bin Othman Al-Rumayyan, delineated his organization’s strategy going forward. But the biggest stir was created by the unveiling of NEOM, a futuristic megacity to be built on the shores of the Red Sea and financed with $500 billion.
This special economic zone will span three countries, and its territory will be bigger than half of Switzerland. The location is strategic, because 10 percent of international trade passes through the Red Sea and 70 percent of the world’s population is within eight hours’ flight.
The megacity will be solely powered by renewable energy and focus on sectors such as mobility, industry, biotechnology, media, technology and tourism. This is an undertaking of truly epic proportions. The beauty of NEOM is that it neatly fits into another grand geo-economic design: China’s “One Belt, One Road” vision.
The naysayers were quick to point out the difficulties in creating such a metropolis from scratch — as they had been in describing the obstacles to implementing Vision 2030. Are the vision and NEOM ambitious? Yes. Will there be many hurdles to overcome, and will there be setbacks? Yes. But 70 percent of the Kingdom’s population is below the age of 30 (roughly 23 million people). The country urgently needs to create jobs to accommodate this “youth bulge.”
With 70 percent of the Kingdom’s population below the age of 30, the country urgently needs to create jobs to accommodate its ‘youth bulge,’ and Vision 2030 and NEOM are set to provide just that.
Cornelia Meyer
The dominant oil and petrochemicals sectors are not labor-intensive enough to achieve this goal, so the government has no alternative but to come up with ambitious plans. In order to move an affluent and conservative society, one probably needs to set ambitious targets. Sometimes one has to “shock” the powers that be and the people a bit in order to move the needle.
Where the Kingdom and the FII got it right was that job creation on this scale needs a vision, and a bold one at that. Visions need momentum. There is nothing to focus the mind more than sharing these plans with world leaders and getting their buy-in. This creates excitement on a global strategic level, which in turn creates an obligation on behalf of the host government to deliver.
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region needs to create in excess of 100 million jobs over the next 10 years just to stand still. Countries urgently need to provide employment for their young populations. The region outside the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is sadly affected by many internal and external problems, as well as by political strife. This means the debate never moves on from politics to economics, but it needs to if the young are to find employment.
MENA needs major infrastructure projects to be designed and implemented to get economies moving. Public and private sectors need to coordinate investment to create the much-needed jobs. Maybe Vision 2030 and the conference can serve as an inspiration. NEOM can hopefully become a catalyst and an example for neighboring countries.
The economic debate is crucial, because it is not possible to create stable and peaceful societies with unemployed young men roaming the streets. The youth of the region needs and deserves a perspective.
• Cornelia Meyer is a business consultant, macroeconomist and energy expert.
Twitter: @MeyerResources
http://www.arabnews.com/node/1183701
Foreign investors to be given full access to Saudi parallel market
Reuters | Published — Friday 27 October 2017
Mohammed El-Kuwaiz, chairman of the Capital Market Authority. (Courtesy of Tadawul)
RIYADH: Saudi Arabia plans to make its capital market more accessible to foreign investors by giving them full access to NOMU, a parallel market recently launched for small and medium-sized enterprises, Mohammed El-Kuwaiz, chairman of the Capital Market Authority (CMA) said Thursday.
Non-resident foreign investors will be able to invest directly in the parallel market starting from Jan. 1 next year, he said during an investment conference taking place this week in Riyadh.
Saudi Arabia’s reforms to develop and open up its capital markets are part of Vision 2030, an economic reform plan aimed at boosting growth in the private sector and at diversifying the country’s economy beyond oil.
Qualified foreign institutions were allowed to start investing directly in Saudi Arabia’s stock market in 2015, and qualification requirements were eased in 2016.
Saudi Arabia has now over 100 qualified foreign institutional investors, of which more than 20 percent registered in the past month, El-Kuwaiz said.
Foreign investors in NOMU will no longer have to meet requirements to qualify as foreign institutional investors, but will have to continue to obey limits on foreign ownership of stocks, the chairman said.
As part of its efforts to open up the Saudi capital market, the CMA is reviewing issuing and listing rules to make the listing of stocks and debt instruments easier, he said.
As to new listings, around five to six initial public offerings are currently being reviewed by the authority, El-Kuwaiz said.
When asked about the IPO of oil giant Saudi Aramco, El-Kuwaiz said that foreign investors could participate in IPOs within Saudi Arabia. Saudi authorities have said Saudi Aramco would be listed on both the Saudi stock exchange, called Tadawul, and on one or more international exchanges.
During the same investment conference in Riyadh this week, the CEO of Tadawul said the Saudi stock exchange could absorb the entirety of Saudi Aramco’s IPO.
http://www.arabnews.com/node/1183866/saudi-arabia
Saudi Arabia’s Tadawul stock exchange chief pledges more reforms
Frank Kane | Published — Thursday 26 October 2017
RIYADH: Sarah Al-Suhaimi, the chairperson of the Tadawul stock exchange, has committed the Riyadh market to further reform and modernization in an effort to ensure inclusion in global investment indices as soon as possible.
Speaking at the Future Investment Initiative (FII) in the Saudi capital, she said that there was “more to come” from the Tadawul’s expansion program, in particular plans to introduce a clearing house for derivatives trading and a plan to cross-list stocks with other Gulf and international exchanges.
“We want to encourage everyone to invest in Saudi Arabia, and we are continuously changing to make this easier,” she told Howard Marks, chairman of US investor Oaktree Capital, at the FII.
“We have already introduced very necessary changes, and the results are showing with Tadawul on the watch list for inclusion in the MSCI and FTSE Russell indices,” she said.
One of the leading female business leaders in the country, she also outlined the changes already introduced at Tadawul to broaden its international appeal, including opening the exchange to foreign investors and introducing a more efficient system of share settlement.
The plan to cross-list with other Gulf exchanges could be an important move as the Kingdom seeks to develop its capital markets.
The Tadawul is the biggest exchange in the region and ranked 26 in the world in market capitalization, but has suffered from what some investors regard as a lack of liquidity and transparency in comparison with markets in other countries.
She also spoke of the need to get women more involved in the financial industry and used her own career as an example. “I began at Samba and faced small challenges that nobody wanted to do. But we used to dream big and we met those challenges.
“Today, endless opportunities exist in Saudi Arabia for women, who have more support. They can do much more for themselves in the country,” she added.
“What I want to tell young women is if you find a challenge in a field that you like, just do it, even if you think you can’t succeed. I know they can.”
The Tadawul chief also touched on Saudi Aramco, the oil company which is planning an international public offering next year on the Tadawul and possibly another big international exchange.
“Aramco is one of the biggest talent factories in the Kingdom, with established practices and cultures allowing young people to develop,” she said.
She added that Tadawul was to launch a series of roadshows in a bid to attract big institutional capital.
http://www.arabnews.com/node/1183306/business-economy
SoftBank books $3 billion in first 5 months of partnership with Saudi PIF
FRANK KANE | Published — Thursday 26 October 2017
Masayoshi Son. (AFP)
RIYADH: Masayoshi Son, the partner of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, revealed that his Vision Fund has made a return of 22 percent in its first five months of operation and turned in a profit of $3 billion.
Now he is ready to launch similar funds in the near future.
Son, also founder and chief executive of SoftBank of Japan, told the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh that now was the time to invest in the hi-technology sector because the future prospects of artificial intelligence and robotics were so positive.
“This is just the start for tech valuations. I would not call it a peak at all, it is just the beginning,” he said, contrary to some expert predictions of a “bubble” in technology valuations.
PIF pledged to commit $45 billion to the Vision Fund.
Son said that the fund had made some 15 investments in its first five months.
“People said that $100 billion is too much to put into a single fund, but I say it’s too little. I would like to do more of a similar size.
“The next one will not take five years. Each fund will be roughly the same size, but we will launch them more frequently,” he said.
“People call me an optimist, people say I’m crazy, but I take it as a compliment,” he said.
Son, who almost went bankrupt in the dot com bust of 2000, said that then was the perfect time to invest in hi-technology. “If I had any money, I would have bought then,” he said.
He was speaking after Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman unveiled plans for a $500 billion megacity called Neom in the north west of the country bordering Jordan and Egypt.
“I’m very excited to be part of Neom, and by the role we will be playing in it with the Kingdom,” he added.
He also told how the Crown Prince had first talked to him about technology investment in Tokyo.
“People says that I convinced him to put $45 billion into the fund during a 45 minute conversation, but that is not how it happened. He already had the idea to go for artificial intelligence, robots and super technology, and we found we had a lot in common. That’s how we created a friendship, partnership and a bonding of the mind,” he said.
“It is a great dream. All the dreamers come to a new place, and we will create that at Neom,” Son said.
He mapped out a future for the business world where artificial intelligence and robotics would become the driving commercial forces.
“Ten years ago, the only technology company in the top ten biggest in the world by market capitalization was Microsoft. Today, there are seven tech companies in that list, and two of them are Chinese,” he said.
“Artificial intelligence will redefine every industry. The Internet is only a small part of the big change. AI will revolutionize all sectors,” he added.
http://www.arabnews.com/node/1183266/saudi-arabia
Saudi Arabia’s PIF aims to manage over $400 billion in assets by 2020
Reuters | Published — Wednesday 25 October 2017
Saudi Arabia's PIF aims to manage over $400 bln in assets by 2020." (SPA)
RIYADH: Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) aims to increase its assets under management to 1.5 trillion riyals ($400 billion) by 2020 as part of the country’s Vision 2030, an economic reform plan aimed at boosting private-sector growth and developing non-oil industries.
The country’s main sovereign wealth fund, which is expected to receive proceeds from the planned sale of 5 percent of state oil company Saudi Aramco’s shares, has currently around $230 billion worth of assets under management.
PIF plans to create 20,000 direct domestic jobs, and 256,000 construction jobs by 2020. This will increase PIF’s contribution to Saudi Arabia’s gross domestic product from 4.4 percent to 6.3 percent, it said in a statement on Wednesday, during a huge investment conference in Riyadh arranged by the fund.
Investments will be in sectors such as real estate and infrastructure as well as in new areas of activity in the Saudi economy through the establishment of companies such as the Saudi Arabian Military Industries company and the Saudi Real Estate Refinancing Company.
One of the biggest tasks under PIF’s responsibility is the delivery of a $500 billion plan to build a business and industrial zone extending into Jordan and Egypt.
PIF will also seek to maximize value in the fund’s existing assets and has set a new target to increase total shareholder return to 4-5 percent from 3 percent, it said on Wednesday.
“The PIF Program represents a vital milestone as we work toward realizing Vision 2030,” Prince Mohammad bin Salman Al-Saud, the plan’s architect, said in a statement.
Outside of Saudi Arabia, PIF’s investments will be in a number of assets such as fixed-income, public equity, private equity and debt, real estate, infrastructure and alternative investments such as hedge funds, the fund said.
http://www.arabnews.com/node/1182936/saudi-arabia
