RIYADH, Oct 11 (AFP) - Saudi Arabia will seek to create a "pro-business environment" and foster investment opportunities in energy and other sectors, the oil-rich kingdom's investment chief said Monday.
The Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (SAGIA) will work to "create a pro-business environment, provide comprehensive services to investors, and foster investment opportunities in energy, transportation, and knowledge-based industries," SAGIA chief Amr Dabbagh told reporters.
The goal is to "achieve rapid economic growth in Saudi Arabia, capitalizing on the kingdom's competitive strengths as the global capital of energy, and a major hub between the East and the West," said Dabbagh, who took over at SAGIA in March.
Outlining his authority's strategy for the next five years, Dabbagh said investment in the energy sector would include downstream industries such as petrochemicals, water and electricity, and energy intensive industries like minerals.
He said SAGIA aimed to "leverage the kingdom's position as a hub between the East and the West by working with authorities to develop the country as an efficient launchpad for goods and services."
It would also strive to develop opportunities in information and communication technologies because of their key role in raising productivity, which drives economic growth, as well as in producing high-income jobs.
In seeking to create a "pro-business environment," SAGIA would "cooperate with other government agencies and private sector organizations to improve the country's business laws and policies according to international best practices," he said.
Dabbagh said investments that had poured into Saudi Arabia showed that foreign entrepreneurs had not been scared off by a string of terror attacks which have killed around 100 people, many of them Westerners, and wounded hundreds more in the past 18 months.
"We have seen billions of dollars going into the gas sector; we have seen 4.5 billion dollars coming to downstream industries and we have seen the stock market and real estate value mushrooming," he said.
"We have just seen an injection of three billion dollars for the second GSM license," noted Dabbagh.