Saudi Economist Appointed Visiting Scholar at Stanford University

Dr. Khalid Alsweilem (Asharq Al-Awsat)
Dr. Khalid Alsweilem (Asharq Al-Awsat)
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Saudi Economist Appointed Visiting Scholar at Stanford University

Dr. Khalid Alsweilem (Asharq Al-Awsat)
Dr. Khalid Alsweilem (Asharq Al-Awsat)

The prestigious Stanford University has recently announced appointing a Saudi economist and investment expert as a visiting scholar.

Stanford Center for Sustainable Development and Global Competitiveness (SDGC) and Stanford Long Term Investing (SLTI) said they are pleased to welcome Dr. Khalid Alsweilem, PhD, as a Visiting Scholar to Stanford.

His research focuses on the study of sovereign wealth funds, with a particular focus on Saudi Arabia’s reserve sovereign funds and their links to the real economy, the University wrote on its official website.

His current efforts complement the theoretical work he did at Harvard’s Department of Economics on portfolio theory approach to public finance in Saudi Arabia and its application to his work as Director General of Investment Department and Chief Investment Officer of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA) during the past 30 years. SAMA is the Kingdom’s Central Bank.

Dr. Alsweilem has published numerous scholarly pieces focused on the connection between sovereign wealth and the “real economy.”

His most recent book, dubbed “Sovereign Wealth Funds in Resource Economies” was co-authored with Malan Rietveld, Fellow at the Center for International Development at Harvard University, and published in 2018 by Columbia University Press.

The San Francisco-based University is one of the world’s most important universities that have been operating for over a decade. It was credited with technical progress, as it started from its laboratories at the Silicon Valley in the 1960s.

Dr. Alsweilem is a former Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

He was a lead author for three major papers on sovereign funds models and institutions that were published as joint reports by the Belfer Center for Science and International affairs and the Center for International Development at Harvard.

He is currently working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Golub Center for Finance and Policy (GCFP).



Egypt Seeks 20 LNG Cargoes for Winter

FILE PHOTO: Egyptians walk in front of the central bank in central Cairo, Egypt, June 7, 2017. REUTERS/Mohamed Abd El Ghany/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: Egyptians walk in front of the central bank in central Cairo, Egypt, June 7, 2017. REUTERS/Mohamed Abd El Ghany/File Photo
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Egypt Seeks 20 LNG Cargoes for Winter

FILE PHOTO: Egyptians walk in front of the central bank in central Cairo, Egypt, June 7, 2017. REUTERS/Mohamed Abd El Ghany/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: Egyptians walk in front of the central bank in central Cairo, Egypt, June 7, 2017. REUTERS/Mohamed Abd El Ghany/File Photo

Egypt is seeking winter cargoes of liquefied natural gas for the first time in years, highlighting a deepening energy shortage, Bloomberg reported.

State-owned Egyptian General Petroleum Corp. issued one of its biggest tenders, asking for 17 shipments for its floating import terminal at Ain Sukhna and three more cargoes to be delivered into neighboring Aqaba, Jordan, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Egypt is seeking the deliveries from October to December, the people said.

Meanwhile, Egypt's Suez Canal Economic Zone signed contracts worth $1.067 billion linked to several projects to manufacture chemical and food products and renewable energy components at the China-Africa summit, the prime minister's office said in a statement on Friday.

In other economic news, Egypt's central bank as expected left its overnight interest rates on hold, saying inflation pressures had subsided but that economic growth had softened.

The lending rate remained at 28.25%, while the deposit rate stood at 27.25%, the bank said in a statement.

It was the third time that it left rates unchanged since a 600 basis point (bps) hike on March 6, when it signed a $8 billion financial support agreement with the International Monetary Fund.