Arab News, Saturday, May 27, 2023 | Thul-Qidah 7, 1444
Saudi Arabia’s PIF announces $3bn investment unit for Iraq
Saudi Arabia:
Aligning with its strategy to seek new
investments in the Middle East and North Africa region, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign
wealth fund has created a unit with a capital of $3 billion to invest in
industries across Iraq.
According to Muteb Al-Shathri, acting CEO of the
Saudi-Iraq Investment Co., the investment unit will be headquartered in the
Kingdom and will look for funding opportunities in infrastructure, mining,
agriculture, real estate development and financial services, among other
areas.
The announcement was made on the sidelines of the
Saudi-Iraqi Coordination Council being held in Jeddah, and comes after the
Kingdom’s Minister of Investment Khalid Al-Falih said Saudi Arabia has allocated
$1 billion for reconstruction projects in Iraq, while $500 million has been set
aside to support trade between the two countries.
The Iraqi government is also in talks with Saudi
companies, including Aramco, to develop the Akkas gas field in the western Anbar
province — a project that could produce more than 400 million cubic meters of
gas per day.
The Saudi-Iraq Investment Co. is one of the six
regional investment vehicles the Public Investment Fund said it would establish
in Iraq, Jordan, Bahrain, Sudan, Oman and Egypt.
The PIF is currently driving the Kingdom’s Vision
2030 and is playing a crucial role in materializing the economic diversification
targets of Saudi Arabia.
In January, data released by the Sovereign Wealth
Fund Institute revealed that the PIF has maintained the sixth spot in the list
of top sovereign wealth funds worldwide, with assets worth $607.42 billion.
Currently, the sovereign fund owns 71 companies in
10 different sectors, and until now, it has created more than 500,000 direct and
indirect jobs.
In November 2022, PIF Gov. Yasir Al-Rumayyan said
the fund is committed to creating 1.8 million jobs.
“It is not only the figures we are looking at, but
the quality of these figures, the quality of these jobs,” said Al-Rumayyan.