A number of major local and international companies today signed an agreement on supporting and sponsoring the 2nd Competitiveness Forum to be organized by the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (SAGIA) from January 20-22, 2008 in Riyadh. The forum, to be held under the title "Competitiveness as an Impetus for Economic Growth", will discuss a number of papers on ways of improving the investment environment from an international perspective, focusing on the Kingdom's experiment in this field which aims at reaching the 10X10 goal, putting the Kingdom among the world's first ten countries in terms of competitiveness in 2010. In remarks on the occasion, Amro bin Abdullah Al-Dabbagh, Governor of SAGIA, thanked the domestic and international companies and institutions for their initiative to sponsor and support the international competitiveness forum. He said the list of the forum's sponsors reflects the status of the forum internationally. Saudi Arabia ranked first in the Arab world and the Middle East as the best investment environment according to a report titled "Doing Business 2008" issued by International Finance Corporation (IFC), an affiliate of the World Bank.
