The Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry's Committee of Foreign Investment will hold on Monday the first Annual Meeting of Foreign Investors during which participants will be acquainted with the role of the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (SAGIA). Mahdi Al-Nahari, chairman of committee, said this is a unique meeting which seeks to encourage foreign investors to invest in the Kingdom and discuss the obstacles that face those investors and the facilitations provided to them. The committee seeks to connect foreign investors with pertinent authorities and represent them before authorities and provide them with an environment conducive to investment, Al-Nahari said. "We want investors to contribute socially to society and we'll create investment opportunities for them in national economy. In this regard, we have plans to set up a non-profit fund for foreign investors to finance small- and medium-scale projects and the programs of producing families." The investors will get to know about the support provided by the Human Resources Fund, the Investment Law and other pertinent laws and how to benefit from the incentives offered by SAGIA, he pointed out. In conjunction with the JCCI and SAGIA, the committee will set up a detailed database for investors in the Kingdom and will launch a website for foreign investors which has information about investors and their investments all over the Kingdom. The JCCI Committee of Foreign Investment represents foreign investors in Jeddah and is the only one in the Kingdom as other chambers don't have similar committees. Around 7,400 licenses have been issued to foreign investors around the Kingdom, 4,000 of them in Jeddah. The total volume of foreign investment in the Kingdom reached SR552 billion by 2009, SR133 billion of it w __
