SAGIA strives to boost competitiveness

Addressing the Social Development Forum at Jeddah Hilton, he emphasized the need to activate the role of national and foreign companies in boosting social and economic development.

“The Saudi Responsible Competitiveness Index is one of the many initiatives launched by SAGIA to enhance the competitiveness of both public and private sectors in the Kingdom,” the governor told the forum, which was opened on Saturday.

He said SAGIA wanted all government departments to adopt “competitiveness” as their common language, especially those departments that are related to investment.

Al-Dabbagh called for greater efforts to remove the obstacles facing the private sector by comparing investment procedures in the Kingdom with global best practices and taking steps to develop them.

He also referred to SAGIA’s efforts in the service of Saudi society in cooperation with a number of strategic partners. “Our policies related to foreign investors are based on incentives not force.”

Saudi Arabia, which is a member of World Trade Organization, offers a variety of incentives to national and foreign companies. “We are committed to facilitating investment procedures.”

Al-Dabbagh said the percentage of Saudis working in companies licensed by SAGIA has reached 27. “At the same time, it’s not more than 10 percent in other private companies.”

He said SAGIA in association with King Khaled Charitable Foundation developed international standards to assess the performance of companies, especially in the areas of training manpower, protecting environment and ensuring transparency.

He also spoke about SAGIA’s 10x10 vision, which aims at achieving rapid and sustainable economic growth in Saudi Arabia, capitalizing on the Kingdom’s competitive strengths as the global capital of energy and as a major hub between East and West. Its strategy that is already in play is expected to draw investments worth SR300 billion and create more than a million jobs.