Saudi Arabia is planning to set up a new sovereign wealth fund worth $6 billion (SR22.5 billion) as its main investment focus is shifts to domestic projects, the central bank governor was quoted as saying this week. “At this stage the sovereign wealth fund is on the drawing board and it's not going to be sizable. It will be around $6 billion only and managed by the Public Investment Fund,” Hamad Al-Sayyari, head of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA), or central bank, told the Oxford Business Group in a report sent to Reuters on Friday. The SAMA report said Saudi Arabia's main concern is “to focus on domestic development and infrastructure, economic diversification and job creation”. Sayyari's deputy, Mohammed Al-Jasser, said in January the Kingdom, the world's biggest oil exporter and a key US ally, was planning to set up the fund. The US Treasury said Thursday it had reached a series of agreements with two powerful sovereign wealth funds based in Abu Dhabi and Singapore covering investments in US markets. The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), run by the emirate of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, is thought to be the largest sovereign fund in the world, controlling assets of more than $900 billion. The agreements were hammered out in a meeting at the US Treasury hosted by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and come amid mounting congressional scrutiny of foreign government funds, some of which are buying up large stakes in corporate America. The International Monetary Fund and the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development are also trying to thrash out similar voluntary principles governing sovereign wealth funds. Paulson announced the agreements after meeting Singapore's Finance Minister, Tharman Shanmugaratnam, and the deputy chairman of the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation (GIC), Tony Tan. The GIC controls investment funds of more than $100 billion. Government of Abu Dhabi executive council member Hamad Al-Hurr A-Suwaidi and the executive director of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), Hareb Masood Al-Darmaki, from United Arab Emirates, also participated in the talks. Some Western politicians have expressed concern about how the authorities in countries such as China, Russia and the Gulf states, which have amassed huge reserves from trade surpluses, will manage foreign investment of their wealth funds, especially in the United States and Europe. __
