Qaeda 1431 H. / 26 October 2010, SPA -- Omer bin Abdullah Al-Dabbagh, Governor of General Commission for Investment, confirmed today that his organization is working to provide support for domestic investors, promote their activities and upgrade the level of their contribution to the economic life and intensify the organization's efforts to attract foreign investments. In a meeting with a number of businessmen in Dammam, hosted by the Eastern Region, Dabbagh said the commission's vision is to achieve fast and continuing economic growth by investing the ingredients of strength in the Saudi economy in its capacity as the world's largest source of petroleum, among the biggest energy sources and a link between east and west. Thus, we could become among the world's best ten in terms of competitiveness of investment environment in 2010, Dabbagh was quoted as saying. He added that Saudi Arabia could do that through creating a healthy working environment, a society based on knowledge, international economic cities attractive to national and foreign capital. This has led to several initiatives to improve the investment competitiveness, including the most growing 100 companies, regions' competitiveness, competitiveness in the field of social service, he said, adding that "we believe that the current surge in the level of foreign investments was due to the policies of the prudent government" of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, led by the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud in addition to the positive response of the private sector to these reforms. He drew the attention to a World Bank report on the easiness of practicing business that sent the Kingdom to the 13th place in 2009 for the last five years compared to the 67th in 2005 out of 181 countries. Al-Dabbagh said the foreign investments direct credit total amounted to $552 billion by the end of 2009, according to a report on economic sectors performance. He added that the increase in foreign and joint investments reached SR1126 billion by the end of 2009, jumping from SR279 billion in 2005. --More
