Saudi Gazette report

JEDDAH — Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman announced on Sunday the launch of the Global Supply Chain Resilience Initiative (GSCRI).

The GSCRI aims to make Saudi Arabia a location of choice for leading global industrial companies looking to drive competitive advantage and improve business resilience.

The initiative also aims to strengthen the Kingdom’s position as a major hub and vital link in global supply chains.

The initiative set to enhance the Kingdom’s economic position to be among the 15 largest economic powers in the world by 2030.

The Crown Prince, who is also chairman of the Council of Economic and Development Affairs (CEDA), emphasized that this initiative will provide a great opportunity for Saudi Arabia to achieve common successes.

“This will be instrumental, together with the already launched development initiatives, in enabling investors of all sectors to benefit from the Kingdom’s resources and capabilities to support and develop these chains. This will also contribute to build successful investments that will give greater flexibility to economies and consumers around the world, apart from ensuring the provision and sustainability of supply chains reaching all parts of the world effectively and with highly competitive advantages,” he said.

The Crown Prince noted that the GSCRI will bring the Kingdom closer to achieving its Vision 2030 aspirations to be a top 15 global economy by 2030 and leave a prosperous legacy for future generations.

The GSCRI is one of the initiatives of Saudi Arabia’s National Investment Strategy, launched in October 2021 to accelerate efforts to make the Kingdom a global investment powerhouse. The initiative aims to enable global investors to make optimal use of the Kingdom’s natural resources and untapped potential and form strong relationships with regional and global markets.

The GSCRI aims to make the Kingdom an optimal investment environment for all investors in supply chains, through several steps.

These steps include, identifying and developing investment opportunities and presenting them to investors, establishing a number of special economic zones in the near future, through which an attractive environment can be created for investors, in addition to attracting the regional headquarters of international companies to the Kingdom.

The Kingdom is also working to implement regulatory and procedural reforms in various aspects, which, in turn, will contribute to further improving the investment environment and increasing its attractiveness and competitiveness. As well as make the investment plays an essential role to achieve economic growth and diversity in light of Saudi Vision 2030 objectives.

The pandemic, trade disputes and the geopolitical landscape have broken or weakened global supply chains, driving up commodity prices and disrupting production and distribution. This initiative aims to strengthen the position of the Kingdom in the global economy, and to mitigate the impact of global disruptions.

The GSCRI will leverage the Kingdom’s resources, infrastructure and location to bring greater resilience to economies and companies across Europe, the Americas and Asia, while further enhancing Saudi Arabia’s position in the global economy.

The strategy of continuous enhancement of the investment environment will be coupled with attractive opportunities and a unique incentives budget, including SR10 billions in financial and non-financial incentives. This aims to attract SR40 billions of quality, industrial and service investments in global supply chains to the Kingdom within the launching phase.

Saudi Arabia offers a strong value proposition to investors across several key dimensions. It provides a resilient economy which is the largest in the Middle East and the fastest growing in the G20, a strategic location at the heart of three continents and a source of key raw materials for manufacturing. Saudi Arabia also offers access to oil, gas, electricity, renewable energy and human resources at competitive costs.

The Kingdom offers a robust logistics infrastructure across industrial cities, airports and ports, with ambitious expansion plans underway as part of the National Transport and Logistics Strategy.

The country’s digital infrastructure has witnessed significant progress, with widespread high-speed internet coverage and 5G now available to nearly 80 percent of the population. Saudi’s workforce is young, educated and ambitious, with Saudis under the age of 30 accounting for about 60 percent of the population.

In addition to these advantages, the Kingdom has launched many ambitious plans and programs that have already begun to be implemented, with the aim of achieving sustainability, protecting the environment and confronting climate change. These plans include major initiatives such as the “Green Saudi Arabia” and the “Green Middle-East” initiatives, and the program to diversify the energy mix used in generating electricity, so that the proportion of renewable energy in electric power production will be 50 percent by 2030.

They also include the development of Blue and Green hydrogen production to make Saudi Arabia the largest producer and exporter of this product, as well as pioneering steps in the development and application of carbon capture technologies, which supports the GSCRI in one of its main axes to attract green investment opportunities such as manufacturing green metals using green hydrogen, manufacturing hydrogen production devices by electrolysis, advanced industries in recycling and others, in furtherance of Saudi Arabia’s initiatives for the circular carbon economy.