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PIF Deputy Governor: We Aim to Focus on 13 Vital Sectors

Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) Deputy Governor Yazeed Al-Hamid, Asharq Al-Awsat
Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) Deputy Governor Yazeed Al-Hamid, Asharq Al-Awsat
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PIF Deputy Governor: We Aim to Focus on 13 Vital Sectors

Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) Deputy Governor Yazeed Al-Hamid, Asharq Al-Awsat
Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) Deputy Governor Yazeed Al-Hamid, Asharq Al-Awsat

Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) is looking to find sustainable sources of income in the future, revealed Deputy Governor Yazeed Alhumied.

He said the sovereign wealth fund is seeking to serve as an effective investment tool for Saudi Arabia to diversify sources of income.

“PIF is an effective tool for enhancing Saudi Arabia’s efforts to diversify sources of income away from oil. It works to invest in feasible projects that contribute to finding sustainable sources of income in the future,” Alhumied told Asharq Al-Awsat.

“Over the past years, PIF has been able to achieve a positive impact on the local economy and maximize sustainable returns.”

“The fund doubled the size of its assets under management to currently reach more than SR1.8 trillion ($480 billion),” confirmed Alhumied.

Between 2017 and the end of the second quarter of 2021, PIF has helped launch ten new sectors. This resulted in the creation of more than 400,000 direct and indirect jobs.

Alhumied said that PIF’s selection of 13 priority sectors for investment follows specific criteria that included an evaluation based on global and local perspectives and analysis of market attractiveness and size, expected growth, and available opportunities.

“PIF has an important catalytic and integrative role by investing in new sectors that attract the private sector to develop them.”

“Over the next five years, PIF aims to focus on 13 vital and strategic local sectors,” revealed Alhumied.

According to the deputy governor, those sectors include aviation and defense, financial services, healthcare, food and agriculture, consumer and retail goods, real estate, entertainment, tourism and sports, transport and logistics, communications, media and technology, service facilities, and renewable energy.

Alhumied clarified that the evaluation of Saudi sectors prompts competitiveness on a regional and global scale. It also covers the sectors’ impact on the Saudi economy and helps in prioritizing sectors according to the national plan for transformation, Vision 2030.

PIF’s ambitious strategy, through which it launched promising sectors, contributes to empowering the private sector, affirmed Alhumied.

“PIF is very keen to contribute to the economic development in the Kingdom by activating and developing vital and promising sectors that contribute to empowering and strengthening the participation of the private sector,” he said.

“Indeed, it is one of the important elements of PIF’s business model, as it evaluates the impact of its investment initiatives on the private sector in a comprehensive and accurate manner,” he added.

The strategy creates many opportunities for the participation of the private sector as an investor and partner in PIF’s investments and as a supplier to its subsidiaries.

“PIF aims to increase the contribution to local content to 60%. This will have a direct impact on empowering the local private sector and creating jobs,” said Alhumied.

Alhumied stressed that PIF’s capital rotation program has numerable benefits.

“The process of capital rotation is an important and essential factor in developing the Saudi financial sector and attracting new investors,” he said.

“It is one of the most important objectives of PIF, which plays a major role in developing the Saudi financial market and increasing the participation of the private sector by creating an attractive investment environment for investors.”

Besides selling stakes in companies owned by PIF, the program reinvests proceeds in strategic sectors with an economic stimulus effect.

PIF is constantly working on evaluating its assets and establishing companies. Moreover, the fund also seeks to acquire assets, develop them, and subsequently sell them as mature investments.

“PIF has made significant strides in achieving many ambitious investments in its capacity as the main investment arm of Saudi Arabia,” noted Alhumied, adding that the fund’s strategy in the coming years will focus on launching several sectors and initiatives that contribute to achieving the Kingdom’s Vision 2030.

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Interviews

Goldrich to Asharq Al-Awsat: No US Withdrawal from Syria

US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Ethan Goldrich during the interview with Asharq Al-Awsat
US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Ethan Goldrich during the interview with Asharq Al-Awsat
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Goldrich to Asharq Al-Awsat: No US Withdrawal from Syria

US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Ethan Goldrich during the interview with Asharq Al-Awsat
US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Ethan Goldrich during the interview with Asharq Al-Awsat

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Ethan Goldrich has told Asharq Al-Awsat that the US does not plan to withdraw its forces from Syria.

The US is committed to “the partnership that we have with the local forces that we work with,” he said.

Here is the full text of the interview.

Question: Mr. Goldrich, thank you so much for taking the time to sit with us today. I know you are leaving your post soon. How do you assess the accomplishments and challenges remaining?

Answer: Thank you very much for the chance to talk with you today. I've been in this position for three years, and so at the end of three years, I can see that there's a lot that we accomplished and a lot that we have left to do. But at the beginning of a time I was here, we had just completed a review of our Syria policy, and we saw that we needed to focus on reducing suffering for the people in Syria. We needed to reduce violence. We needed to hold the regime accountable for things that are done and most importantly, from the US perspective, we needed to keep ISIS from reemerging as a threat to our country and to other countries. At the same time, we also realized that there wouldn't be a solution to the crisis until there was a political process under resolution 2254, so in each of these areas, we've seen both progress and challenges, but of course, on ISIS, we have prevented the reemergence of the threat from northeast Syria, and we've helped deal with people that needed to be repatriated out of the prisons, and we dealt with displaced people in al-Hol to reduce the numbers there. We helped provide for stabilization in those parts of Syria.

Question: I want to talk a little bit about the ISIS situation now that the US troops are still there, do you envision a timeline where they will be withdrawn? Because there were some reports in the press that there is a plan from the Biden administration to withdraw.

Answer: Yeah. So right now, our focus is on the mission that we have there to keep ISIS from reemerging. So I know there have been reports, but I want to make clear that we remain committed to the role that we play in that part of Syria, to the partnership that we have with the local forces that we work with, and to the need to prevent that threat from reemerging.

Question: So you can assure people who are saying that you might withdraw, that you are remaining for the time being?

Answer: Yes, and that we remain committed to this mission which needs to continue to be pursued.

Question: You also mentioned the importance of humanitarian aid. The US has been leading on this. Are you satisfied with where you are today on the humanitarian front in Syria?

Answer: We remain committed to the role that we play to provide for humanitarian assistance in Syria. Of the money that was pledged in Brussels, we pledged $593 million just this past spring, and we overall, since the beginning of the conflict, have provided $18 billion both to help the Syrians who are inside of Syria and to help the refugees who are in surrounding countries. And so we remain committed to providing that assistance, and we remain keenly aware that 90% of Syrians are living in poverty right now, and that there's been suffering there. We're doing everything we can to reduce the suffering, but I think where we would really like to be is where there's a larger solution to the whole crisis, so Syrian people someday will be able to provide again for themselves and not need this assistance.

Question: And that's a perfect key to my next question. Solution in Syria. you are aware that the countries in the region are opening up to Assad again, and you also have the EU signaling overture to the Syrian regime and Assad. How do you deal with that?

Answer: For the United States, our policy continues to be that we will not normalize with the regime in Syria until there's been authentic and enduring progress on the goals of resolution 2254, until the human rights of the Syrian people are respected and until they have the civil and human rights that they deserve. We know other countries have engaged with the regime. When those engagements happen, we don't support them, but we remind the countries that are engaged that they should be using their engagements to push forward on the shared international goals under 2254, and that whatever it is that they're doing should be for the sake of improving the situation of the Syrian people.

Question: Let's say that all of the countries decided to talk to Assad, aren’t you worried that the US will be alienated in the process?

Answer: The US will remain true to our own principles and our own policies and our own laws, and the path for the regime in Syria to change its relationship with us is very clear, if they change the behaviors that led to the laws that we have and to the policies that we have, if those behaviors change and the circumstances inside of Syria change, then it's possible to have a different kind of relationship, but that's where it has to start.

Question: My last question to you before you leave, if you have to pick one thing that you need to do in Syria today, what is it that you would like to see happening today?

Answer: So there are a number of things, I think that will always be left and that there are things that we will try to do, to try to make them happen. We want to hold people accountable in Syria for things that have happened. So even today, we observed something called the International Day for victims of enforced disappearances, there are people that are missing, and we're trying to draw attention to the need to account for the missing people. So our step today was to sanction a number of officials who were responsible for enforced disappearances, but we also created something called the independent institution for missing persons, and that helps the families, in the non-political way, get information on what's happened. So I'd like to see some peace for the families of the missing people. I'd like to see the beginning of a political process, there hasn't been a meeting of the constitutional committee in two years, and I think that's because the regime has not been cooperating in political process steps. So we need to change that situation. And I would, of course, like it's important to see the continuation of the things that we were talking about, so keeping ISIS from reemerging and maintaining assistance as necessary in the humanitarian sphere. So all these things, some of them are ongoing, and some of them remain to be achieved. But the Syrian people deserve all aspects of our policy to be fulfilled and for them to be able to return to a normal life.