Saudi Gazette report

RIYADH — Minister of Communications and Information Technology Abdullah Al-Swaha affirmed on Wednesday that the support of Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman has been instrumental in scoring the greatest success stories of the 21st century in terms of the qualitative leaps in the technological fields.

Speaking to Al-Ekhbariya channel on the sidelines of his participation in the ceremony of announcing the first wave of projects supported by the Private Sector Partnership Reinforcement (Shareek) Program on Wednesday in Riyadh, the minister said that the effects of the measures taken by the ministry can be seen in releasing the frequency spectrum, spreading optical fibers and supporting infrastructure.

Regarding the infrastructure and submarine cables project, which is one of the projects signed at the ceremony, Al-Swaha stressed that this project had its beginning with a meeting between Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, in which the broadband lines were agreed upon. He noted that the project will link Saudi Arabia with Italy, France, Greece, India, and Singapore.

He said that the Saudi Aramco project aims to attract more than SR10 billion in cloud computing, ensuring that it is a point of attraction, and its launch will be in the second half of this year, while the third project aims to build data centers worth SR1 billion, and that is in partnership with Zain.

The minister stated that infrastructure projects, submarine cables, Saudi Aramco, Google, and Zain projects amounted to SR13 billion. “Every riyal pumped into these projects brought in two and a half riyals, with a contribution to the gross domestic product (GDP) amounting to SR30 billion, apart from the creation of 14,000 qualitative jobs.